I was bored in school a while ago, and decided to let my thoughts flow on a particular subject which has significance to me - dreams (the night kind. although aspirations are good too).
and so here it is:
Mots people do not think much of dreams, awarding them no merit, attributing little to no value to them and generally dismissing them as worthless.
Why do we have dreams? Likely no one can answer this question . Of course, fixating on certain things during the day with intense emotion may bring these themes into some night dreams -- this is the subconscious mind at work. But, are dreams real?
How can we be sure that our waking life is objective reality? Often, people have incredibly vivid & lucid dreams. These dreams at the time feel extremely real, and then of course, the person wakes up to the "real world".
Others claim they don't dream, but this is a misconception since everyone dream. Dreams alternate with different brainwave states and REM sleep, as one typically has around 7-10 dreams per night. Dream recall can be improved through practice and intent (the neuroplasticity of the brain will be covered in a future topic), ameliorated by a certain diet, and supplements.
Time is rather different in dreams. I've had dreams that have appeared to last days, a week, or even months. The concept of time being slower in dreams was introduced in Inception, although I'm not sure if it has basis in reality. Although one thing is certain -- time in dreams works differently. For instance, once I timed myself to have been asleep for no longer than 10 minutes. In this time I had a dream which seemed much longer than this amount. It is possible that dreams "dreams within a dream"; 'real life' constituting the latter 'dream'.
Interpreting dreams is no easy task as many psychologists have found out. The subconscious communicates to us through symbols. In other words, things are not as they appear in dreams.
Some themes in dreams are translated to real-life concept one would understand, and so, their perception becomes a bit skewed.
It is however possible that dreams themselves are glimpses at parallel realities and have as much (maybe even more?) validity than our waking life. Although there has been much scientific advancement in other areas of importance, dreams still remain a relatively unknown frontier. (Note: Unknowingly when I wrote this 2 weeks ago, I had no clue I would use this blog name, nice synchronicity here.)
A few things I am wondering about are:
What happens if we DON'T dream?
Does time exist in dreams? Or is the interpretation of the dreams translated to the concept we refer to as time, once we awake? The conscious mind always tries to make sense of things which are aligned with pre-existing beliefs, so that is something I am interested in finding out.
What is possible in lucid dreams? I've had first hand experience with LD's and can testify that they are indeed as amazing as they sound. Superpowers, etc, exist. But I am more interested in the philosophical implications of this, and as well, if we can mitigate every day tasks to the subconscious? Can we learn in ld's? Can we discover more about ourselves?
Pretty messy, but that is the first topic. More questions than answers were brought to light, but this is good. Seems like learning about dreams will be something that we will have to do empirically. That is, by consciously dreaming, achieving states of lucid dreams, and fervent experimentation.
I had also 'let my thoughts flow' on morality, but will likely not post this since I am currently studying different moral philosophies as well as the metaphysics of morality so my thoughts on it are frequently changing.
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