Regular readers will be stunned to know that since early childhood I have been plagued by bad dreams, (what? Not even one of you will pretend to be surprised?).
What dreams are and what they mean is unknown to all, and will probably remain to do so, however, certain aspects of the dream can be explored. For example, external stimuli whilst sleeping can cause the aspect of a dream to change- heat can cause anxiety, half falling out of bed can create feelings of instability and so on and so forth. From this we know that the brain is still hard at work processing stimuli (note: whales, when sleeping, shut down half their brain and keep the other half active as breathing is, for them, conscious, and to sleep fully would cause death) both the external and, as Freud excellently points out (wait, I am praising Fraud? Is this the end of days?!), by referencing another (ah, crisis adverted), with the external sources of stimuli limited, the mind turns inwards and from this the slight irregularity of the body, for example the bowel, can cause the aspect of dreams to be changed.
There seems to be a consistency in dreams and meaning in that, for example, teeth falling out means one is not feeling heard, not being able to find a private bathroom denotes violations of privacy and being exposed (note: losing your bedsheets can also give the feeling of being exposed as, in sleep, we are at lour most vulnerable) yet, I would not go as far as to say the dream is inherent and the meaning is thus gleaned. Rather, I would suggest that one looks at the landscape of the dream.
Freud, again citing, states that we most often dream of things from our past, or rather the images in the dream come from our past, as things within the present as still being processed by the conscious brain and has not yet become unconscious. This can explain whilst, for example, being concerned about a holiday, you dream of a school test and so on and so forth as the anxiety is transferred from a real-life situation from the present and posited upon images from the past. This may make one think that the past has a hold over them, as in not being able to move on from, but if we take the citation as being correct that we do not dream with images from the conscious world, then it is clear to see that the images from the past take on a surrogate role and do not, in any way, reflect upon the past (note: trauma victims are an exception to this rule as they are trapped within the emotion of an event and cannot escape ad thusly are forced not only to relive but also refeel the event).
To expand upon the dreamscape further, we can only know what we know. The dreams take on a personal aspect as we are confined to our own experience. What do I mean by this? Well, to use the toilet and anxiety notion, we all use the toilet, we all know the desperate need sometimes associated with finding a toilet to perform our perfectly natural act, an act which, in modern society, is seen as being vulgar and shameful. Thusly, the inability to find a toilet, to go and or be in private, represents the anxiety we feel elsewhere. And here we also have a possible explanation for the universality of dreams. The fact many can have the same toilet dream or falling dream etc. stems, in my opinion, from one reason- a shared experience. As I have stated we all know the anxiety that can be attached to the toilet so it makes sense that it would take on an image of anxiety, also, it is an intimate, personal action and thusly a source of shame in our enlightened world (note: this could be the cause of a common lexicon in relation to the language of dreams).
Dreams have often had associations with prophecy, from the Augers of Ancient Greece, to the Bible to modern psychology. I would, building upon what I have just written, state that rather than a psychologist or a mystic, to understand prophetic dreams, one must consult a historian. What do I mean by that? Well, dreams often work in a linear narrative A leads to B, B to C, as time, although sometimes not seeming linear within the dream, still remain linear in that the one experiencing the dream is experiencing the dream within linear time, i.e. their sleeping body in the non-dream world (note: it was hard to phrase that for as Mr Poe stated, ‘is all that we see or seems, a dream within a dream’) and thusly when attempting to make sense of the dream, to remember the dream, our mind works in a linear pattern. As we think in linear time and subscribe to the, frankly absurd, notion of causality, we can look to the past for guidance to the future. One might have a clichéd dream about failing a test and being held back in summer school. Whilst, as we have said, the anxiety is referred from another stimuli, the dreamer understands, previously, that tests can be passed or failed and that there are consequences for both- you might get a brighter future as a psychologist or you might be forced to retake the school year ad nauseum. Both of these are extremes; however, the dreaming mind exists only within extremes, or maybe only the dreams we remember, and thusly the worst/best case scenario is the one presented. From this one can predict what will happen in the future, for example in the Bible, Joseph predicts that plenty will be followed by famine. This is generally how things go in nature and thusly he can draw upon previous lived experience to say that once something become too inflated it will not be able to continue- not only in natural nature but also economics etc.
From these two examples, I hope I have shown that although we can never know what a dream is, in it-self, or how it is created or where it comes from, dreams can be understood in a personal context as they can only contain that which we already know from conscious and unconscious lived experience (as Leonard Cohen stated, even the imagination has its own history) and can either be explored to see what currently is good/bad in your life or, as with all bad dreams, think of it as a film that you don’t have to watch so end the film and start anew.
Sweet dreams
‘till next time
thegreaterfool2016 