Do You Have A Dream?

What do you think about when you see or hear the word, dream?

Like many people living in the US, I recall Dr. Martin Luther’s famous speech in which he emphatically states, “I have a dream.” In this instance, it was a motivational “call to arms” directed to the victims of social bias to have the courage to stand up and claim their rights of freedom to the “good life”.

Many other people are concerned about the meaning of the dreams they experience while sleeping. They pay a great deal of attention to the various possible meanings of their dreams, even to the extent of spending a lot of money for self hypnosis programs and/or other literature to learn how to interpret their dreams.

As a layman, I believe our fascination with dreams is a part of our evolutionary heritage similar to fear. Much of the mythology, that shapes our lives today, was based on the dreams/visions of the Shaman.

And, my belief is basically supported by Wikipedia, and I quote: “Throughout history, people have sought meaning in dreams or divination through dreams.”

Wikipedia goes on to say, “Dreams have also been described physiologically as a response to neural processes during sleep; psychologically as reflections of the subconscious; and spiritually as messages from gods, the deceased, predictions of the future, or from the Soul. Many cultures practice dream incubation with the intention of cultivating dreams that are prophetic or contain messages from the divine.”

It is these thoughts about the meaning of dreams; divination through dreams and about the relationship of dreams and spirituality that captures the commercial entrepreneur’s interest and subsequent exploitation.

Some entrepreneurs feel that lucid dreaming holds an important key to one’s life. Accordingly, programs and audio CDs have been created to help clients/customers to develop and incorporate this strategy as a daily practice.

One form of lucid dreaming involves the dream of absent-minded transgression (DAMT). This is a dream where the dreamer absentmindedly performs an action that they have been trying to stop. Sometimes they experience feelings of intense guilt. My own experience of the phenomenon occurred several years after I quit smoking. Occasionally, I would wake up sitting at the edge of the bed smelling and tasting the pleasure of a cigarette. It was so realistic, I was not sure whether it was a dream or a real experience.

Dream recall is a skill that can be acquired through training and is often used in psychotherapy with the patient being required to maintain a dream journal. Thus, some entrepreneurs feel that being able to recall dreams is important and so a new market for dream recall training books, audio CDs and dream journal diaries has been created to satisfy this desire for personal growth.

According to surveys, many people feel that their dreams serve to predict their future. Psychologists explain this as selective memory. We remember the good dreams and quickly forget the “bad” dreams. Experiments have been conducted that support this theory.

The beginning of this article described dreams as being [physiological] responses to neural processes during sleep and [psychologically] as reflections of our subconscious.

It is important to remember that when and if you decide to attempt to interpret your dreams, you do so for your own entertainment and to perhaps satisfy your own curiosity about “Who you really are.” There is great debate as to whether or not self-hypnosis, bi-neural beats, and other technologies are effective tools in helping to achieve this knowledge of ourselves or are they like placebos?