Whispers in the dark

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I dream frequently. Dreaming always fascinated me and I'm kind of disappointed when I wake up after a dreamless night. Some people say you can tell the future from them or they even contain prophecies from gods. Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit. Although there are no universally agreed facts about dreams and we're not completely sure what purpose they serve, everyone has some theories about them. Most people try to explain the experience biologically, like they're for removing useless information from our memories or to strengthen useful ones. That's cool, but I'm more into the psychological side of things, as always. I have some theories about dreams too. Yeah, I might be full of shit too, but at least I can share my ideas with you and feel better about it. Of course the foot-stone of all my thoughts are the theories of Carl Jung. What? Don't tell me you didn't see that coming.

So we all know that our brain function on two major levels, one is the concious and the other is the sub-concious mind. During the daytime, our sub-concious is repressed by our concious mind because god knows what would happen if we'd release the deepest thoughts from our sub-concious, especially from our shadow. Things get interesting when we fall asleep because that's when we can't fully control our concious mind and thoughts. Yes, I'm aware of the stages of sleeping (N1,N2,N3 and REM), but I don't want to go into detail because I'd sit here forever. Check it out on Wikipedia if you're interested.

So our repressed thoughts can roam our minds somewhat freely when we're sleeping. Dreams are merely the reflections of our sub-concious thoughts mixed with some of our (un)processed concious ones. You might say "so how come I see people and places in my dreams I had no chance to see before?". Well, the thing is - you did. A glimpse from a TV program, a magazine, a poster, a face on the street. Your brain contains far more information than you're aware of. It pieces them together, mixes them, creates new material be it people, places or faces.

But no matter what dreams actually are, one thing is certain. We need them for various reasons. Some of us need them to let their imagination and thoughts free, others need the aid of their dreams to cope with their personal problems, others, like me just enjoy the thrill even if we're talking about nightmares.

Enjoy your dreams, cherish them because when you're dreaming you're truly free.