AND NOW THE DREAM...
We have a dilemma of sorts, and it is this. We do not always know what we know. We have forgotten. We seem not to be able to remember. Where has that information gone, and why do we not remember? And, in some instances, we come to know something but thought it was unimportant or irrelevant and let it fall away. It fell away.
Where did it go? It is somewhere in our head, our brain. But now it's out of sight. Maybe the best we can say is that a lot of information fell out of our head into that part of our mind we call the unconscious, which among other things is a basket of memories—memories of things we perceived with our five senses or intuition, feelings and thoughts, decisions we made, judgements at which we arrived, actions taken or not taken.
This basket of the unconscious is very large. We cannot measure this basket we call the unconscious, but it has been with us a very long time. It contains a lot of information we accumulated in our short lifetime. And in the basket of our unconscious, there are remnants of historical knowledge that our family and ancestors collected over the centuries. Within the neural pathways of our brain we contain corridors of wisdom that gave birth to our magnificent civilization. It's all there: the wisdom and follies, victories and defeats, awe and terror, hope and disillusionment, laughter and tears, love and hate.
You and I know these experiences. Many of them we have forgotten, suppressed or repressed. And, oh yes, the basket of the unconscious also contains traces of lives not lived or even of new knowledge approaching us from afar for which we do not even hold words.
We do not always agree with one another. We hold different political views, different religious backgrounds, different cultures and races and origins. Each of us holds values important to us, needs that drive us, and identities that differ. But one thing we have in common. We all dream in the service of our deeper humanity.
Now comes the question. How do we retrieve all the knowledge, all the information that may in fact be crucial not only for our personal survival but that of humanity and the planet itself. Well, take heart my friends. Our knowledge is not lost because each night we dream several dreams. Unfortunately, most of us since early childhood have done our best to ignore the dreams so that we can get a goodnight's rest, right? However, we do that at our peril. Let me tell you why I say this.
A DREAM IS A STORY
And like all stories, it has a beginning, a plot or theme, a movement toward a climax in which some matter is made more clear, and an ending. Observe closely and you will likely see how your dream reveals a night-time drama.
A DREAM REVEALS RAPID-EYE MOVEMENT
In sleep laboratories, generally when the eyelids display movement it is noted as REM sleep. When individuals are awakened, during the rapid-eye phase of sleep, they will say that they were dreaming at that time. We also see this REM pattern in our pets, occasionally accompanied by short abrupt movements, as if the animal is attempting to move like they would in waking life.
A DREAM IS A BRIDGE
I am using the metaphor of "bridge" to suggest the connections made in our dreams, connections that connect conscious with unconscious, past with present, present with possible features of an unknown future, and meaning with meaninglessness. A dream bridges values and needs in the service of placing dreamers in their roles of a life story that pursues purpose and calling.
A DREAM IS A COMPENSATION
The dream compensates waking life. It reveals both conscious and unconscious while showing any tension that may exist between our conscious life and what is unconscious. When the unconscious is in disagreement with the conscious, struggles follow in which the unconscious persuasively confronts the conscious. Finally, on some occasion, a message may arrive telepathically—so to speak—in which the future life of the dreamer will intercede, evoking a sense of the unknown. (See Carl Meier's description of the levels of compensation, described in his three volume study of analytical psychology.)
A DREAM IS MYSTERIOUS
Having said all of the above, it may or may not strike the reader as unnecessary to say the dream is mysterious. Still, it is true and must be said in behalf of noting that there still remains much to learn about the dreaming mind.
DREAMS LINK US WITH EARLY ANCESTORS
We cannot say with certainty when dreams first appeared, but biological and anthropological evidence suggest to evolutionary biologists that Neanderthals and early Homo Sapiens dreamed. Furthermore, REM sleep is considered to be a "highly consensual mammalian trust," and that REM sleep cycles would have been helpful for problem solving, bringing together pieces of crucial information. Finally, the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet display paintings suggesting symbolic and abstract thoughts.
DREAMS ARE PURPOSEFUL
With this, I return to the theme of this writing. It is no wonder that so many references to dreams appear to all the people of the world regardless of race, culture, society, or historical epoch. Surely their purposefulness evokes in us the interest dreams deserve in behalf of our well-being and that of our world today.
Shall we listen to our dreams? In my next writing, I plan to consider a dream of Carl Jung in which he discovered something very important about himself.
(The book I referenced earlier is Carl Meier, The Psychology of Carl Jung, published by SIGO Press in three volumes.)
We have a dilemma of sorts, and it is this. We do not always know what we know. We have forgotten. We seem not to be able to remember. Where has that information gone, and why do we not remember? And, in some instances, we come to know something but thought it was unimportant or irrelevant and let it fall away. It fell away.
Where did it go? It is somewhere in our head, our brain. But now it's out of sight. Maybe the best we can say is that a lot of information fell out of our head into that part of our mind we call the unconscious, which among other things is a basket of memories—memories of things we perceived with our five senses or intuition, feelings and thoughts, decisions we made, judgements at which we arrived, actions taken or not taken.
This basket of the unconscious is very large. We cannot measure this basket we call the unconscious, but it has been with us a very long time. It contains a lot of information we accumulated in our short lifetime. And in the basket of our unconscious, there are remnants of historical knowledge that our family and ancestors collected over the centuries. Within the neural pathways of our brain we contain corridors of wisdom that gave birth to our magnificent civilization. It's all there: the wisdom and follies, victories and defeats, awe and terror, hope and disillusionment, laughter and tears, love and hate.
You and I know these experiences. Many of them we have forgotten, suppressed or repressed. And, oh yes, the basket of the unconscious also contains traces of lives not lived or even of new knowledge approaching us from afar for which we do not even hold words.
We do not always agree with one another. We hold different political views, different religious backgrounds, different cultures and races and origins. Each of us holds values important to us, needs that drive us, and identities that differ. But one thing we have in common. We all dream in the service of our deeper humanity.
Now comes the question. How do we retrieve all the knowledge, all the information that may in fact be crucial not only for our personal survival but that of humanity and the planet itself. Well, take heart my friends. Our knowledge is not lost because each night we dream several dreams. Unfortunately, most of us since early childhood have done our best to ignore the dreams so that we can get a goodnight's rest, right? However, we do that at our peril. Let me tell you why I say this.
A DREAM IS A STORY
And like all stories, it has a beginning, a plot or theme, a movement toward a climax in which some matter is made more clear, and an ending. Observe closely and you will likely see how your dream reveals a night-time drama.
A DREAM REVEALS RAPID-EYE MOVEMENT
In sleep laboratories, generally when the eyelids display movement it is noted as REM sleep. When individuals are awakened, during the rapid-eye phase of sleep, they will say that they were dreaming at that time. We also see this REM pattern in our pets, occasionally accompanied by short abrupt movements, as if the animal is attempting to move like they would in waking life.
A DREAM IS A BRIDGE
I am using the metaphor of "bridge" to suggest the connections made in our dreams, connections that connect conscious with unconscious, past with present, present with possible features of an unknown future, and meaning with meaninglessness. A dream bridges values and needs in the service of placing dreamers in their roles of a life story that pursues purpose and calling.
A DREAM IS A COMPENSATION
The dream compensates waking life. It reveals both conscious and unconscious while showing any tension that may exist between our conscious life and what is unconscious. When the unconscious is in disagreement with the conscious, struggles follow in which the unconscious persuasively confronts the conscious. Finally, on some occasion, a message may arrive telepathically—so to speak—in which the future life of the dreamer will intercede, evoking a sense of the unknown. (See Carl Meier's description of the levels of compensation, described in his three volume study of analytical psychology.)
A DREAM IS MYSTERIOUS
Having said all of the above, it may or may not strike the reader as unnecessary to say the dream is mysterious. Still, it is true and must be said in behalf of noting that there still remains much to learn about the dreaming mind.
DREAMS LINK US WITH EARLY ANCESTORS
We cannot say with certainty when dreams first appeared, but biological and anthropological evidence suggest to evolutionary biologists that Neanderthals and early Homo Sapiens dreamed. Furthermore, REM sleep is considered to be a "highly consensual mammalian trust," and that REM sleep cycles would have been helpful for problem solving, bringing together pieces of crucial information. Finally, the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet display paintings suggesting symbolic and abstract thoughts.
DREAMS ARE PURPOSEFUL
With this, I return to the theme of this writing. It is no wonder that so many references to dreams appear to all the people of the world regardless of race, culture, society, or historical epoch. Surely their purposefulness evokes in us the interest dreams deserve in behalf of our well-being and that of our world today.
Shall we listen to our dreams? In my next writing, I plan to consider a dream of Carl Jung in which he discovered something very important about himself.
(The book I referenced earlier is Carl Meier, The Psychology of Carl Jung, published by SIGO Press in three volumes.)
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