The dream weaver

One of the things the experts still haven't been able to figure out is the whole dream experience. Why do we dream and why do we dream what we dream about? It's not that there aren't any theories. In fact, there are as many theories about dreaming as there are about practically anything. But for all the books and articles written on dreams and dream interpretation, there's still more we don't know than we know.

The lay person typically divides dreams into two major categories: good dreams and bad dreams. But even here, the demarcation line isn't clear. I've had dreams that felt like good dreams when I was having them but they turned into bad dreams when I woke up and thought about them. We sometimes have recurring dreams that seem to come out of nowhere. We had never dreamed about a particular thing before, then we dream about it several nights in a row, then we don't dream about it again. Not long ago, I dreamed three nights in a row about killing two people and this was not an abstract dream like many of my dreams are. I know these two people and the dream was as real as it gets. And even though I was killing two people I know, it felt like a good dream when I was having it. It didn't turn bad until I woke up and replayed the dream in my conscious mind. After the third night in a row of having the same dream, I haven't had it since.

The experts say that dreams emerge from our subconscious mind, a non-judgmental side of the self that we can't see into because it IS our subconscious mind, out of reach of either analysis or reason. So I don't know why I dreamed what I did. Research tells us that most people, at some time in their lives, have thoughts flash through their mind about killing someone and I've had those fleeting thoughts before too. But nothing like what I experienced in the dreams. In the dreams my thoughts and actions were specific, task-oriented, well-developed, superbly planned out, and extremely satisfying in their results. As I wrote earlier, it was a good dream, a fulfilling and immensely satisfying dream while I was dreaming it. It only turned into a nightmare when I woke up because that dream was as far away from who I perceive myself to be as a person as it could possibly be.

Other dreams we have ARE nightmares. I've woken up in the middle of the night before in a cold sweat with chills running down my spine because of some horrifying dream I've just had. Sometimes I'm so unnerved I have to get up and do something else for awhile in order to calm myself down before I attempt to go back to sleep. Sometimes I don't WANT to go back to sleep, fearful that the dream will come back again.

Sometimes people play major roles in my dreams that I only barely know in real life and sometimes I don't know them at all, other than to know who they are. Sometimes my dreams are abstract and far out and could never happen in real life and sometimes they are incredibly accurate and realistic.

A good friend of mine told me the other day in discussing this topic that he dreams about flying all the time; that he flies in practically all of his dreams. Not flying in a plane mind you; actually flying himself. Jumping off buildings and flying; jumping up in the air from a standing position and flying; jumping out of windows and flying. I've never had a dream in my life that involves me flying which one again shows us the diversity and unpredictability of dreams. Many of us share common dreams and experiences while also having our own unique dreams that no one else has.

It would be nice I think to absolutely, positively know why we dream the things we do because, since we don't know, our dreams can make us feel either unrealistically optimistic or pessimistic about our real lives when we impose a truthfulness to them they don't deserve. I'm talking here about dreams coming true. I've never had a dream come true so I don't allow my good dreams or bad dreams to affect my awake life one way or the other because to me, a dream is just a dream. But others insist that they've had dreams that HAVE come true and, because they believe they have, they expect ALL their dreams to come true.

Most of us have experienced déjà vu, where we go through a few seconds in time having this overwhelming sense that we've done this before. We know exactly what's going to happen and exactly what's going to be said for just a brief period of time and then it's gone. Some people hypothesize that this is a replay of something we've done before while others say it's a brief glimpse into the future but, in truth, no one knows exactly what it is or why it happens. Dreams are like that too. They both fall into the category of the unknown and the unexplainable.

And maybe it's best they do.