The meaning behind dreams
What do our dreams mean and why do we have them?
Dreaming, especially non-lucid dreaming, is the reproduction of a mental image you have of yourself and the world around you. It doesn’t make “logical” sense at first glance but that’s only due to the way the right brain versus the left brain works.
Dreams are more of a right brain activity so the imagery is very primordial, intuitive and not to be taken literally but poetically.
Have you ever thought you looked a certain way only to look in the mirror or a photo and realize that you actually look bigger or smaller than you thought and then proceeded to adjust the mental image you have of yourself? In a dream you do the same for every detail of the dream world but with an added layer of distortion which we’ll discuss in more detail in just a bit.
To use a neutral example let’s say there are butterflies in your dream, the significance of this imagery is not about what the word butterflies means in the dictionary but rather what butterflies mean to you. The subconscious core of you. How have you always felt when you saw one? Your dream uses the imagery uniquely associated with your current underlying emotion and creates an imagery/story based on your current emotional association with it.
During the day we are more left brain heavy, we can call it the discerning mind, and when we dream we have less of it hence why the story stitched together doesn’t follow a sequential form we would recognize in our waking state as logical. I love the analogy of dreams being like funhouse mirrors. It’s still the same you you’d see in a bathroom mirror but with an added layer of distortion.
Also you can shy away from a thought and or distract yourself but you can’t do the same with a dream. Dreams are pure honesty. In our dreams sometimes we have a positive story about ourselves and sometimes we do not. But isn’t that true of our awake state as well? I recommend using dreams as a litmus test for your state of mind. At the same time although it’s helpful to be aware of them and watch how they evolve, it’s not the end all be all. Nothing is.
99.99% of your dreams reflect your current view of reality. To give one more example if someone/a character is angry at you in a dream it just means at the moment you expect having anger directed at you. Whether you’re accurate or not it doesn’t matter. You dream of something either because you believe there’s a high chance of the scenario happening or it’s one that you’ve given a lot of thought to during the waking state. We create the entire dream world and place the image we have of ourselves in the hierarchical position we believe ourselves to be in at that moment. When there is a change in our core beliefs of ourselves and the world we can see those changes being reflected in our dreams as well.
Lucid dreams are not that much different either. The dream starts out where your core belief thinks you should be placed(your mental image of yourself) but with lucid dreaming you can learn to apply your left brain to do the same thing we do with thoughts during the day which is to manipulate them. You can even meditate in a lucid dream and the whole dream world dissolves and all you are left with is a black nothingness similar to what happens when you quiet the mind during the day.
What is the point of dreaming? Same reason we think. Dreams are just thoughts but distorted. If you think it you dream it. It’s just that some thoughts are so deeply embedded in us we don’t know we’re thinking them. But that’s the cool thing about dreams. In a dream you come face to face with your subconscious.
