Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Sweet dreams!

Dreams amaze me!

Everybody knows bits from here and there about dreams. They are believed to be associated with REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep, during which the brain activity is very much similar to wakefulness. But not much is known about their origins, even the exact part or parts of the brain which are involved, their purpose (if there is any), and even there is not one universal “interpretation” of one specific dream.

There are different ideas and theories about the dreams, from them being actually are the result of the brain distressing or removing the “junk” from itself, or a compensation for one-sided attitudes held in waking stages. They are told to be actually presenting things that we cannot “say” directly, or even act like psychotherapy. There are other theories from the dreams being merely chemical interactions and processes going on in the brain without any specific meaning, to books and books of interpretations, because they can be some light dimmed on the “holographic” image on the brain and thus meaningful. There are even theories that you can never be sure if you are awake now and then go to sleep and dream, or your dreams are actually your real world, and reading these lines are actually part of your dream!

Whatever they are, they are certainly very interesting, either mine or the others’. I actually had a friend who used to gather people’s dreams to get ideas for her books. It amazes me how various and different they can be. I like to hear them, sometimes they are very creative. They can mix and match different people in odd places (for example your boss, your grandma, your uncle and the beggar in the bus station with you at the age of ten, attending the wedding of a soccer player in your old school!), they can create strange places (some of my recurring dreams take place in some strange place with many movie theatres that are usually showing bunch of movies all at the same time and you can select what you want to see), or you may see those whom you miss too much (have you ever had the dream of your belated grandma, wearing nice clean bright clothes, laughing out loud?).
They can be really scary (specially when you see somebody entering your room from the balcony window and you can neither run, nor scream!), or very refreshing (when I dream that with each step, instead of walking, I actually slip on the air or try to jump and instead start to fly, and interestingly, I don’t fall, but fly freely!).
They can make you anxious (the infamous dream of “the exam” which we haven’t studied for) or even more tired when you wake up (when you fight with somebody!)
They can be close to reality (experiencing a similar situation as you might probably have during a day), or the most surreal ones, similar to a “Salvadore Dali” painting or a “Luis Bunuel” movie (I have lots of these, a white dog wearing a black leather jacket chasing me on a motorcycle, or a ceiling lamp that can convert to a boiled egg)!!

No matter if I can find an interpretation for them or not, or if I can ultimately find their origin and functions, I like to hear about them. It can be as fun as attending a “short films festival”! The only thing missing is the closing ceremony, and the trophies!

3 comments:

Behdokht said...

Hi Nava,

You just gathered a collection of all kinds of dreams that I usually have, sometimes I jump from one to another completely different story and this goes on for my entire sleep and well, I wake up and feel that I need to get some rest! I rarely had such dreams that could shed light on something occurring in my real life while I knew people who could interpret their daily happenings based on what they saw in their dreams.

Nice blog by the way,

:)

Unknown said...
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Anonymous said...

Roohe Ashena,
Dreams are one of the tools that we use to get to know our patients. We do not interpret the dreams(neither with those common interpretation books nor with the Jungian method…) but we use them to understand the state of the mind as well as emotional state of the patients. They are very good mirror of what is happening in an individual. They are not censored nor being contaminated with logic.
From that point of view my dear...it was very interesting for me to read some of “your” dreams examples :):):) - just a joke! As always I enjoyed your entry.