Dreams Essay Research Paper DreamsA dream is

Dreams Essay, Research Paper

Dreams

A dream is a series of thoughts, images or emotions occurring during sleep. So why do we have dreams. Is it because, as Marie Louise Von Franz states, Dreams show us how to find a meaning in our lives, how to fulfill our own destiny, how to realize the greater potential life within us. (Tanner P 1) Or is it simply because, Dreams help us solve our problems , as Wilda B. Tanner once said. (P 1)

Dreams themselves evoke a reaction: either negative, in the form of resistance; or positive, often in the form of over-idealizing them; but rarely neutral. Dreams can contain very important messages from our unconscious mind, and always tell the truth. Although it arises out of the conscious mind, the dream s content is specified by the conscious situation of the dreamer: the event s, emotions, thoughts, fears, hopes and conflicts of the dreamer s waking life. (Matoon P 75) The clear thing about dreams is that they have meaning; they are not simply randomly arranged images. Dreams are a symbolic language; they are pictures, images, not thoughts. Everyone dreams, but of what, well that is what distinguishes us whether we can recall our dreams or not.

We have come to regard our awakening state as the state of existence where reason and rationality prevail, and if we can not touch it, explain it, predict it and hopefully control it then it does not have meaning. This is strange because when one reflects on the fact that we sleep on average, eight hours a night sleeping, that we spend roughly one third of our lives sleeping, and that twenty to twenty five percent of our sleeping time is spent dreaming. If this is true then how come some people think that dreams are not real. If we think for a moment that images are not what one sees, but a way of seeing, then to see imaginatively, what a dream does, is to see resemblances of things, people or events. As Peter O Connor says, The stuff of dreams are not unreal they are another reality an as if reality . (P 75)

There are no limits when dreaming. Dreamland is fantasy, fiction and invention. We seemingly cannot control the dream world. Given then the dream world violates our preferred notions of reality. Every night we are subject to another reality, another form of existence, where we invent stories, some about people, places and things we know from our awakening reality. When dreaming we ignore the usual restraints of space and time. We alter reality when sleeping. We can manipulate the size and age of someone we know or we could find ourselves doing two totally contradictory things at the same time.

Our problem is, as Erich Fromm so adequately states, That symbolic language, the language of dreams, has been forgotten by modern man. Not when he is asleep, but when he is awake… By forgetting the symbolic language, he is disconnected from his own plot and thus vulnerable to living out others pre-formed, stereotyped, and pre-packaged myths or plots. In so doing, he is turning his back on his own individuality and, ironically, on his depth of being, which inhibits his awareness of others individualities. (O Connor P 45) Dreaming is the most natural, obvious, and readily accessible means for remembering a symbolic language. Since imagination can be seen as breath to psyche in the same vital way as oxygen is to the body, thus dreams are essential to life. As the medieval author Synesius of Cyrene states, Sleep offers itself to all: it is an oracle always ready to be our infallible and silent counselor. (O Connor P 5)

James Hillman has this to say about a dream: The dream itself is a symbol; that is, it joins in itself the conscious and the unconscious, bringing together incommensurables and opposites. (O Connor P 7) Dreams are intrinsically linked to the process of completing oneself through their capacity to help us recognize parts of ourselves that we may normally be unaware of, thereby integrating into our conscious views of ourselves. Each recognition builds another link between consciousness and unconsciousness. It is the dream world that enables us and assists us to stay literally in touch with the imaginable world and helps us to see through literality and concretism, so that images become available for integration into consciousness, thereby moving us towards completing ourselves.

Dreams have intrigued man since the dawn of time. The primitive man believed in dreams most of all because his belief in dreams was linked to his belief in his soul. He believed that the soul left the body during sleep, leaving to believe that dreams were a real experience of the disembodied soul. The Primitive man believed more in his dreams then his own conscious and relied on them for guidance in his everyday life.

The American Indians believed that the soul was an individual expression of the Great Spirit , but the soul needed guidance, and dreams were this guidance. In a sense dreams were a message from God. Dreams or similar experiences are found all over the Bible. Numbers 12:5-6 states, … And he said Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and speak unto him in a dream . Daniel 2:29 states, As for thee, O king, thy thought came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass.

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