We dream every night. You might be reading this thinking; ‘but, I didn’t dream last night.’ Well, I’m here to tell you that you certainly did, but you just fail to remember it. In fact, you didn’t just have one dream last night, you had between 3 and 6. That’s 3, 4, 5 or 6 unbelievably exciting worlds you entered last night, without even leaving your bed. And tonight you will get to experience the mystery again, as you will tomorrow night, and every night following that. How exciting, don’t you think?!
We (‘we’ referring to the average person) spend approximately 26 years of our life asleep. And each time we go to sleep, we have up to 6 dreams.Although each dream might only last for as little as a few seconds, or in some cases, a lengthier 20-30 minutes, over the period of our lives, these dreams add up. It’s therefore fair to conclude that similarly to how we spend a significant amount of our lives asleep, we also spend a hefty proportion of our time, dreaming. This fact fascinates me beyond belief, which is why I will be exploring what can only be described as the ‘magical’ world of dreams, in today’s post.
Before we can learn what our dreams mean, it is critical that we can first determine what dreams actually are.
So, what are dreams?
The Oxford Dictionary definition of a dream is; ‘a series of images, events and feelings that happen in your mind while you are asleep.’
As we all know from personal experience, our dreams can be weird and wonderful, supernatural and scary. Dreams can quite literally be anything. Usually a reference to something that has occurred during the waking hours, albeit an altered version of reality, dreams truly are fascinating.
Why do dreams feel so real?
Dreams, despite being nothing more than a simulation,feel incredibly real, both while they are happening, and, if you remember them, when recalling them. The reason behind this, is because when we are sleeping, our consciousness alters.
When we are awake, we acknowledge that our dreams are just that, dreams. However when we are asleep, we believe that our dreams are not occurring in our sleeping state, but in our waking one. We aren’t aware that our dreams aren’t real, because we aren’t aware that we are asleep. What we are experiencing is the only thing we are aware of, and so, this explains why our dreams feel so real.
Why do we dream?
There is no one answer to this question, because, unfortunately, no one can be certain. All we have is opinion, and mine? My view is that we dream to give meaning to our every day lives. As we fall asleep, our subconscious mind thinks about what has happened during the day. Our dreams therefore represent our subconsciousness, with the things we have witnessed during the day occurring in our dreams via metaphors.
As a spiritualist, I believe that the overarching meaning of dreams is to create a ‘bridge’ between the material world we currently occupy, and the spiritual world awaiting us in the future.
This post doesn’t even touch the surface of the fascinating realm of dreams, for there is so much to explore, but I hope that it has sparked some interest in you to do some further reading on the, often overlooked, yet incredibly fundamental part of each and every one of our lives.
So, get into bed early tonight, relax, and look forward to what your dreams have in store for you.
Let’s start a conversation in the comments; can you remember the last dream you had, and why do you think you had the specific dream you recall?
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