Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Final Report Essay

Alyssa Vance
Phil 1030-16
The Philosophy of Dreams
“Trust in dreams,for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.”-Kahlil Gibran
Dreams have always been an open doorway to many questions. What do dreams mean? Are they a form of precognition? Or are they simply a collection of memories throughout our life that congeal during our sleep? There are many ideas people have come up with to try to answer these questions, but I wanted to try to give my own philosophy of it.
I have always viewed dreams as a collection of these questions. Dreams are an escape from reality, but in fact they are your reality. Wikipedia, agrees with me in a sense, their definition of Dreams are as follows: successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.[1] Things that happen in my dreams, often have no realistic qualities, but all include parts from my actual life. For instance, faces, and places I have been are often apart, but very much distorted and this is what alerts me I’m dreaming. Sometimes I think that dreams are a location all their own, like dreaming is not an activity but a place, sort of like in the movie “Land of the Lost” where its like a subconscious lost and found. And in this place called “Dreamland” you are basically living a second life, almost like this place came to be from your subconscious to bring to surfaces regret or fear or secret desires you didn’t know you had and it’s your mind’s way of reminding you.
I have also found from my own personal experience that dreams can be a way to dig up old memories perhaps long past. I find myself sometimes dreaming things that I can’t quite place, but they have such an air of familiarity I know I have been there before, and that’s when I come to realize why, because I have in fact been there and done that. But why would your mind try to remind you of things that are long past? Sometimes the reason we suppress certain memories is because they are too painful or frightening, so why would our subconscious try to trudge all this up? Maybe it’s your mind’s way of trying to get over those fears or to get closure from those painful experiences. Maybe our dreams are just trying to reassure us what we was humans always want to belive. Dreammoods.com says that “In our dreams, we can go anywhere, we can be anybody, and we can do anything.”. Perhaps this is why we dream, because if our minds can’t tell us what we want to hear than who can?
However, the main question that raises my concern is that if there are so many different types of dreams, then what does each one try to tell us? Dreammoods.com has an answer for this too. They actually have a list of the different kind of dreams we can have, and explains each in detail. This list is as follows: Daydreams, Lucid Dreams, Nightmares, Recurring Dreams, Healing Dreams, Prophetic Dreams, Signal Dreams, Epic Dreams.
Daydreams, dreammoods.com claims, are often neglected as a sleep study or form of dream, because they are often considered to be more like a wandering thought than a dream. I personally feel that is a subjective term, because you can be asleep during the day or you can indeed just let your mind wander into an almost unconscious state. For instance most people know when they are asleep. If you take the word in the literal sense you are dreaming during the day, I consider a dream to only be able to take place while asleep. The form of daydreaming enthusiasts are probably considering to not really be a form of dreaming is what I would call as drifting.
Lucid dreams are the closest to reality that we can probably get. The experts at dreammoods.com say that “Lucid dreams give you the ability to control your own dreams and steer them toward the direction you want. In the lucid state, you are more willing to confront threats and as a result, become more self confident.” Going by this theory dreams should just be a preemptive strike at getting things done, I personally wouldn’t consider this a dream, just a to-do list in yur head. This seems to me more like thought, acting out different scenarios of things that are actually going to take place, and its just your mind’s way of trying to figure out the best method of doing this. I have never personally had a dream where I felt in control of anything that happened. I have had dreams that felt so real I had to question if I really was dreaming but none I felt I could change or manipulate in any way.

Nightmares, the dreams we fear the most, the ones that make us jump out of bed with sweat pouring down our faces and tears down our cheeks. This is probably the most puzzling of all, because if you are basing your philosophy of a dream on a dazzling place filled with all your hopes and dreams, and fondest memories then where do nightmares originate? Why would our subconscious deliberately try to scare us? They say here that Nightmares may be your mind’s way to remind you of things you are trying to oush away or forget, a situtaiton you have been trying to avoid. Basically, in order to try and avoid nightmares, one should just conrfront all their issues head-on right? This may work, however for some people it is not enough. Apparently there are some people that are just prone to having nightmares. They supposedly come to people most that are “more sensitive, intuitive, creative, or imaginative”, because these people are much more involved with life around them, and everything affects them much stronger.
However my question is this; if nightmares are a way to remind us of things we are trying to forget, then what are Recurring Dreams repeatedly trying to let us know. Is it something too important and that our mind absolutely needs us to remember? I mean when was the last time you remember a dream begin? How long after it ends do you remember what you dreamed? Dreams are often in and of theirselves unsubstantial, only when we do something like have a nightmare or something that keeps coming back can it stick with us. Even with recurring dreams sometimes they often don’t make any sense at all and you don’t even realize its recurring unless it has already happened several times. For instance, I used to have this dream all the time where I’m driving along this road until I reach this pot hole and fall right through and I’m terrified because the fall is so long and the hole so deep I’m sure I won’t survive; until I make a clean landing on that same road again. What could a dream like that possibly tell me? And when that dream stops reoccurring does that mean you have completed the task or remembered whatever your mind was trying to remind you of?
Another type of dream that is brought up here is Healing Dreams. These are supposedly dreams that help you forecast your health, almost like a precognition of illness or show signs of recovery in your future. Dream researchers have even been able to show that if you suffer from migraines or asthma, or other related illnesses that you experience these dreams before an attack or a massive headache. It’s almost as if they are trying to say here your mind is trying to communicate with your body through a dream to give some sort of warning, like your dreams can tell there is something wrong with you and want to help. Healing dreams are basically another form of the next type of dream I’m about to discuss; prophetic.
Prophetic dreams are a form of precognition, or a way to see into your future in sorts. I’m not saying your dreams are giving you the ability to see the future, but maybe more like trying to give you clues about it. The website basically says it is more like piecing together bits of observations you have previously overlooked, which in turn sort of maps out whats to come in your future. So then if these are trying to give you hints of what’s to come then what’s the difference between this and a Signal dream?
To answer the question, signal dreams are not a way to tell the future but more like ways to help you figure out how to change it. It signals you of things in your daily life you are having troubles with and gives you subconscious advice on how to fix them. So a signal dream is really the best kind of dream, almost like a best friend. It is yourself helping yourself, a way to work through the rubble of your life but like looking through a different person’s eyes.Perhaps this is because we feel we don’t have enough information or we are just incapable of figuring it out on our own. Perhaps it is something else entirely, like our need for human interaction and to get a second opinion; like we just have the need to get an outlook from an outside source, one that isn’t emotionally compromised by other factors.
Dreams are huge, mesmerizing, and compelling this is all true. What they are trying to tell us may be unknown and confusing at times, but there is no doubt in my mind that each one has a message for us. For instance the last time of dream listed, well the last one I am going to cover, is Epic Dreams. Epic dreams in a nutshell are dreams that are so big and profound they could actually leave a lasting impact. They too can be prophetic and signal us to very big and exciting things that are about to happen. Epic dreams are life changing and can often cannot be ignored.
No matter what kind of dream it is we all need to look further into them, do some research, because what our dreams could be trying to tell us could be important. Granted, they could also be a nonsensical collection of memories, but we don’t want to risk ignoring the wrong kind. So, next time you dream, as soon as you wake think about the things you just seen, never brush it off or it may just come back to you; but most importantly, never stop dreaming.
Sources
Online, http://www.dreammoods.com/dreaminformation/#ArticleContinued
Online, Wikipedia.org/Dreams

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