Dreams in history, Part 1

Whether or not modern civilization as a whole gives a flying flip about dreams or their possible role in human development, it is evident that dreams have held a high place in the cultures of our ancient past. Let’s take a look at some of these early people groups and their attitude toward dreams.

Sumer (3000 BCE)

Click for larger view

The Epic of Gilgamesh, the greatest extant literature of ancient Mesopotamia, is laden with several dream sequences of a prophetic nature. In the first tablet, for instance, Gilgamesh tells his mother of a dream:

“Stars of the sky appeared,
and some kind of meteorite …fell next to me…
I loved it and embraced it as a wife.”

His wise mother gave an interpretation:

 “There will come to you a mighty man, a comrade who saves his friend…
You loved him and embraced him as a wife;
and it is he who will repeatedly save you.
Your dream is good and propitious!”

Other dreams in this great poem reveal that, at the least, dreams were vehicles to see future events and should be carefully considered when planning to take action.

Egypt (1500 BCE)

The ancient Egyptians were perhaps the first lucid dreamers in recorded history, nay, soul travelers. They used dreams as vehicles to jettison the physical body and seek the deeper wisdom, advice, and solutions of the spirit world. They even built temples solely dedicated to “dream incubation”. Having marital woes? Sleep in a temple and consult the priest in the morning. This “Master of the Secret Things” would interpret your dreams.

Their word for “dream” is “rswt” and translates to “awakening” and is symbolized by an open eye. Working with dream recall, they believed one would sharpen their memory. Dreams helped them tap into ancient knowledge and to bring guidance and healing.

Although difficult for our modern Western minds to conceive, the ancient Egyptians were said to have had developed advanced conscious dream travel. Even military strategies would be influenced by these master telepaths and remote viewers.

For non-lucid and practical purposes, the Egyptians had published dream books. In one hieratic papyrus, we read the following: “If a man sees himself in a dream…” Below this are several examples separated in a “good column” and a “bad column”. For instance, if a man sees himself in a dream looking out a window, his voice is being heard (good). If a man sees himself in a dream with his bed on fire, he is driving away his wife (bad). This papyrus dates between 1300 and 1200.

Greece

Enter Hypnos and Morpheus. For the ancient Greeks, dream were a way to connect to the gods. Hypnos was the god of sleep, and Morpheus, the god of dreams. They built hundreds of shrines for them, and used them as dream temples, essentially hospitals, like the Egyptians. Here, physical, emotional, and spiritual healing would take place.

Socrates studied music and art because of instruction from a dream.

Plato suggested that in dreams the hideous beast in even the most respectable persons is revealed.

Heraclitus disturbed the status quo, which stated that dreams came from the gods. He, on the other hand, suggested that they came from the dreamer’s mind.

Aristotle, who is the first person to mention lucid dreams was also one to conclude that dreams hold no real purpose. For him, dreams were simply a recollection of the days events.

Similar to the dream books of Egypt, Artemidorus wrote his five-volume Oneircritica, an exploration and interpretation of certain dream symbols.

Hippocrates supported Aristotle’s notion that a person’s dream could be instrumental in knowing the bodily health.

First nightmare, a food safari, and single again

11:30pm bedtime.

“Alienation Nightmare” © 1996 by Sabu

3:45am – I am in bed watching an engrossing but creepy documentary. It begins mildly enough, but in the first few minutes it becomes apparent that this is not a pleasant video. There is cerebral violence and profound sadness here. I had put this DVD in to watch while following along with a manuscript, which I had in my hand, and in my own handwriting.

The details of the DVD are hazy now, but there is a lot of strong and dark emotion, and my notes, of course, coincide with that same dark theme. As the DVD plays and I read along intently, Teresa comes in, apparently having been talking to other loved ones outside about me. She is concerned about the content of the DVD and about my state of mind.

I point to a place in the manuscript of significant emotional anguish, and I tell her that I am not ready to let go of these feelings. Besides, I have no choice. It’s all here in the script. It’s all here in my life. I can’t escape it. I realize that the manuscript is my dream journal, and the DVD is a recording of my dreams.

This is a nightmare, the first recalled since I began writing my dream journal. I realize, too, that it is a movie I have seen played before in previous dreams. I am drawn to it. Morbidly riveted, actually.

I want to scream aloud to relieve my soul of the bottled feelings, but in doing so I know it will harm those around me, causing frightful confusion. They would never understand. Teresa leaves the room, sympathetic and understanding. She understands. She always understands. I release a huge silent scream of pain. My spine tingles with ice cold terror. This is a lonely journey, I realize. Sometimes terrifying.

[Major life changes are difficult, like divorce and leaving your children at an early age to be raised primarily by your ex and whomever she chooses to remarry. So much regret now that they are grown. This dream is a reflection of that regret, the fear of damage I have done, and for just being slow to commit to the hard work of transformation.]

I am now near a mall, walking on a sidewalk with shops to my right and a small thru-street to my left. I am rejuvinated, joyful, and happy. No weight of the world, no heaviness of heart, no feeling of deep sadness. I am carrying my dream journal.

Two dream characters, whom I am familiar with in real life [Ryan and his partner, David] pull up in their car. David is the passenger. I ask David if he would journal with me, so that I have someone to keep me motivated and accountable. Journaling is hard work, and it takes a great commitment to do it consistently and authentically.

“I would be delighted to write,” David said, “But my journal will be about politics.”

I am happy to hear that he will start to journal too. I am in such a great mood.

The car begins to pull away from the curb when I yell, “Stop!…”

Screeeeeeeeeeeeeech.

“…. in the name of love… before you break my heart….” They laugh and drive away as I sing and tap my fingers to the motown beat. [I know these dream characters in waking life from my involvement with community theatre, so breaking out in song is not necessarily an odd thing to do.]

I am walking around several stores inside the mall complex, the last is a cosmetic store with four glass walls. [Teresa works at a cosmetic store in waking life, so that’s why they have ended up in my dreams, no doubt.] After a few minutes of pacing from one side to the other, I realize I cannot find an exit door. I am starting to feel claustrophopic in this rectagular glass box. Then, the clerk behind the counter, noticing my anxiety, reaches over and slides the door open for me. I thank her and leave.

Teresa is here. I am so glad to see her. She tells me she wants to go to two stores, both of which are upstairs. The clerk of one, another cosmetic store, was rude to her on the phone and refused to let her speak to a manager. She wants to find the manager and talk in person.

Here’s the challenge. Both stores are upstairs, and the only way to get up there is to cross a huge river of vegetable casserole and scale a wall, upstream, through of cascading fall of grean bean and potato soup. I make it across the casseroles to the soup falls without getting my shoes dirty, but this is where Teresa must go alone. I am not as motivated to go with her upstairs now.

Teresa, is covered in food as she attempts to hoist herself, amidst the opposing force of falling chunks of creamy potato and herb-laden green beans. She is a real mess, but she doesn’t seem to mind. I just watch in wonder.

[In waking life, Teresa is all about enjoying the journey of life. I tend to hold back with tentative reserve, while she just dives in and enjoys the adventure.]

7am – I am walking in an alley with a dream character that I don’t know. [I think she is a hybrid of several single women I dated when my fiance lived in Los Angeles, most of whom had children from a previous relationship.] I put my arm on her shoulder and realize that this is the beginning of our relationship. Her daughter comes running up from behind us and holds my hand. I sense that this DC (dream character) girlfriend is shy and nervous.

We make it to DCGF’s house, and by this time I am holding her sleeping child in my arms. DCGF’s parents are there, lying on the floor, apparently waiting for us to get home. I ask if DCGF’s daughter needs a nap.

“You’re so old fashioned,” she answers. “Kids don’t nap anymore.”

There is also a massive manhunt in the neighborhood. Police sirens are sounding, and the neighborhood kids are all outside, shooting each other with airsoft gunfire. Apparently there are fugitives hiding in one of the nearby houses.

[My fiance and I have been discussing, in waking life, the option of either having children of our own or adopting. I had a vasectomy after having four children during my first marriage. My age and the length of time since my vasectomy are factors that will affect the likelihood of success. Teresa has never been pregnant, and we would like to try for a baby. I have been doing research on vasectomy reversals, which has given me some anxiety. This is probably the reason I still dream, from time to time, about the thought of marrying someone who already has children of their own. All in all, I have no apprehension about my decision to begin this stage of life with Teresa. I will go with her to the ends of the world.]

Dreamsign Catalogue:

1. Inner awareness (0/4)

2. Action (4/15)

• I had put this DVD in to watch while following along with a manuscript, which I had in my hand, and in my own handwriting.
• I release a huge silent scream of pain.
• After a few minutes of pacing from one side to the other, I realize I cannot find an exit door. I am starting to feel claustrophopic in this rectagular glass box.
• DCGF’s parents are there, lying on the floor, apparently waiting for us to get home.

3. Form (2/14)

• I realize that the manuscript is my dream journal, and the DVD is a recording of my dreams.
• …and the only way to get up there is to cross a huge river of vegetable casserole and scale a wall, upstream, through of cascading fall of grean bean and potato soup.

4. Context (0/12)

Flood of forgetfulness

This morning’s journal entry is sparse. I dreamed all night but I don’t remember much. I was on a team of investigators. We had camera equipment set up to record the movements of someone (in a dream?) and I was in charge of diagnosing behaviors and emotions (?).

Earlier, I was caught in a flashflood and thought I came dangerously close to being swept away.

Dreamsign Catalogue:

1. Inner awareness (0/4)

2. Action (1/11)

• I was on a team of investigators. We had camera equipment set up to record the movements of someone (in a dream?) and I was in charge of diagnosing behaviors and emotions (?).

3. Form (0/12)

4. Context (0/12)

Song of spilled blood

This is a mess of dream fragments. First I am in a large tent, which is constructed like it’s supposed to remain permanently pitched. I am blowing up a balloon, one of those big shiny balloons usually filled with helium. As I am leaving, an ex-girlfriend is here. I realize that I have set up my tent in a commune-type situation in a park(?). She is telling me that her and her daughter’s tents are not very stable, and I tell her that I have to go away on business and that they are welcome to use mine.

I am in a music store, listening to a CD and playing along with my guitar. The CD player is being operated by a dream character that I do not know. I hear a great song and decide in my dream to write my own original song by keeping the rhythm of this one. There is some talk of a DJ gig (Disc Jockey, not Dream Journal). I’m the DJ, and we have to pack to get to the gig.

I am at the gig.

Now I am packing my sound gear and guitar, with the help of my kids, into a van. My kids disappear, and so does my gear, and I am now in one of my company vehicles. A team leader, Mike, [whom I had fired earlier in the year in waking life], is driving. I ask why he is there. I don’t discern the answer, but I am alarmed that I have lost control of this team.

I see another one of my vans pulling out of a parking lot. An uninsured employee is driving. I ask one of the other employees why he is driving that van. It turns out, after I had fired one of the female employees, two others quit, and all three are working for a competitor. And they are still using one of my vans to get their work done. The betrayal is confusing to me, but I feel helpless. I am tangled up in an abnormally long seat belt. Out the passenger window I see a gnarled mess of metal and concrete at a nearby construction site. There has been an accident. Someone drove their car straight into the tangled heap.

I dreamed that I would be journaling this morning, and the title came in my sleep: Song of spilled blood.

I woke up confused by the name. But then it dawned on me. My last dream fragment reveals my unconscious concern over my job at work. I am responsible for the marketing in a large region, and sometimes it feels like I focus on one market at the detriment of another. I can’t be in more places than one at a time. When I finally go and check on another market, my team seems to have changed without my approval or knowledge.

I liken the feeling to a warrior chief who goes away to hunt for food. When he returns, the landscape has changed. He is no longer chief of the tribe. His tents have been pillaged, his women raped, his crops scorched, and his elders massacred.

Warrior Chief, by David Mann. Oil on canvass

Dreamsign Catalogue:

1. Inner awareness (0/4)

2. Action (1/10)

• And they are still using one of my vans to get their work done.

3. Form (2/12)

• My kids disappear, and so does my gear, and I am now in one of my company vehicles.
• I am tangled up in an abnormally long seat beat.

4. Context (3/12)

• As I am leaving, an ex-girlfriend is here.
• I’m the DJ, and we have to pack to get to the gig.
• A team leader, Mike, whom I had fired earlier in the year, is driving.

Lucid dreams for knowledge, improvement, and expression

Lucid dreaming can be a pleasurable pastime or escape from the mundane world of waking, but I’m not interested primarily in trivialities. If I hadn’t experienced such potent and blissful lucid dreams as an 8-year-old child, I probably wouldn’t even bother looking further into it. As stated in an earlier blog, I dismissed my early experiences as something natural that a child “grows out of”. Until recently, I never considered it as a possible means of benefiting the health and/or well-being of the individual.

Now at age 40, I have re-opened the box.

Click photo to read more about “How-To”

The opening chapters of LaBerge’s Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming and Tuccillo’s A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming, both include practical benefits of lucid dreaming. LaBerge’s list includes: adventure, practicing for real life, problem solving, facing nightmares, health, and understanding. Tuccillo’s list is similar: adventure, facing nightmares, creativity and inspiration, problem solving, healing, and self-knowledge. Worded and ordered slightly differently, both lists can be boiled down to essentially 3 things: self knowledge, self improvement, self expression.

Self knowledge

First, can lucid dreaming bring us to a greater awareness of who we really are? I would like to investigate this on 3 levels.

1. Who do I think I am? Can lucid dreams help reveal my self-image in different, more illuminating terms? I am somewhat of a mystery to myself, perhaps from neglect, perhaps from laziness, perhaps from fear. But if lucid dreams can show me, through content, landscape, characters, situations, who I think I am, could they also reveal my deeper self to me?
2. In my investigation is the search for and pursuit of who I really am. By manipulating my fantasy worlds, can I come into contact with a braver, more virtuous and creative being? Are there higher guides who use dreams as a meduim of revelation? Can such transformations come to bear in my waking life whereby I behave differently and get a different outcome?
3. I would like to document some measurable distinctions between the old and new. In short, can lucid dreams be a useful vehicle for the purpose of metamorphosis?

Self improvement

Properly applied knowledge leads to improvement. Can my quest as an oneironaut lead me to a more healthy, productive, and joy-filled waking life?

1. Can my nightly lucid dreaming cause physiological changes that carry over into my waking state? Or can my lucid dreams simply be a spark that lights the fuse toward improvement?
2. Can my explorations reveal hidden wisdom that can be applied to my professional life? Can these applications make a marked difference in my income? Thomas Edison would take cat naps in order to get answers to puzzling dilemmas during his work.
3. And lastly, what do lucid dreams have to offer in the way of lasting happiness? Tuccillo says, “Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Mary Shelley, even Adolf Hitler, were all influences by dream events.” What did they find? How were they enriched or inspired?

Self expression

What does lucid dreaming have to offer me in the way of adventure, enhancement, and advancement?

1. This is probably the most trivial aspects of lucid dreaming. Or is it? Can these escapades to far off and strange dimensions show me how to be a more creative and inspired being? Tuccillo writes about how Paul McCartney found the melody to his song “Yesterday” and the title to “Let It Be” both in dreams.

2. Can these lucid adventures open up opportunities to pick the brains of the likes of Newtons and Einsteins? Can my inner world offer real and life-changing insight? Can this wisdom be applied in my wake life through music, writing, and other creative outlets? For example, where did Carl Jung get the idea during his dream that he should interpret his theories to the lay public? After waking, he wrote Approaching the Unconscious.

3. The bottom line is this: Should lucid dreaming be pursued as a method to grow as a human personality? Will I benefit sufficiently from my pursuits as a fledgling oneironaut (for I have certainly not earned my wings yet!) that my time and energy is well-spent? This is perhaps a question that can only be answered on the other side of the question. Since Lucid dreaming is scientific in principle but subjective in nature, I will have to make a choice to pursue or not to pursue, and live with the consequences either way.

I’m taking Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. I hope to sprout some wings and fly.

With all of our advances in this age in technology and knowledge, no one really understands the full purpose of dreams. But if Freud is correct, and the goal of dreaming is wish fulfillment or conflict resolution, then what would happen if all the accumulated problems of our waking life truly are sent through the filter of our dream state, and instead of dreaming and forgetting, we were to get lucid and resolve them? What would happen then?

This is the key thesis of my inquiry.

Lucid flight school

After reading LaBerge last night, I resolved to dream lucid. I committed to it. I set my intention on it. I accomplished it.

The setting is futuristic, and I am a female trainee at a “wing camp”. There are several people with me, none of whom I recognize. We have been assigned to complete a jumper course, which is a matrix of 3X3 square trampoline-type mats, stacked at multiple levels. Rather than a standard flat survace, however, these mats are simply a rank and file of two-digit numbers that seem to be free floating. 20, 60, or 80 designate the number of feet you would launch when you land on it.

I am a small framed woman and decide to jump in some of the tight fitting areas to master the skill of maneuvering on air.

Although the details are hazy, I am inside an indoor recreation room, now a male. I am looking out into a larger rec area through a huge plate glass window, and I see several women playing Ping-Pong in stripper clothes. One of the “strippers” is doing something provocative with the corner of the table, and I realize that I am in a dream. Lucidity at last!

I take a few steps and launch into flight.

[One of the tasks I had assigned myself while in waking life was to focus on the vividness of the dream. Lately, every source I read about lucid dreaming talks about how a lucid dream can be as vivid as waking life.]

To my great pleasure and satisfaction, the color and clarity of the floor tiles are astonishing. But I want more proof. Taste!

I am flying now between buildings in a futuristic complex of town homes. They look more like the face of an oversized mausoleum, with rows of rectangular sections stacked upon one another in stone. The size is immense, like two huge, intricately carved cliff faces, each overlooking the other. I choose one home, which, although similarly flat at the entrance, has some pleasing porch décor, giving it some charm. I fly in and down into a small kitchen.

There on my right is a shelf full of dry food items, and I see what I’m looking for. Peanut butter Ritz crackers. I taste one, and realize that, yes, in my lucid dream state, I can taste the salt, butter, and peanut butter flavors. Interestingly, while I am chewing, I can’t launch. I have the inner realization, “Of course, I can’t eat and fly at the same time. Everyone knows that.”

After more flying and a few more brief experiences, I lose lucidity. What a ride!

Dreamsign Catalogue:

1. Inner awareness (1/4)

• I have the inner realization, “Of course, I can’t eat and fly at the same time. Everyone knows that.”

2. Action (1/9)

• I am a small framed woman and decide to jump in some of the tight fitting areas to master the skill of maneuvering on air.

3. Form (3/10)

• I am a female trainee at a “wing camp”.
• …a jumper course, … a matrix of 3X3 square trampoline-type mats, stacked at multiple levels, … a rank and file of two-digit numbers that seem to be free floating… 20, 60, or 80 designate the number of feet you would launch when you land on it.
• I am flying now between buildings in a futuristic complex of town homes.

4. Context (2/9)

• I see several women playing Ping-Pong in stripper clothes.
• One of the “strippers” is doing something provocative with the corner of the table, and I realize that I am in a dream.

Morphing orphans

The scene takes place in what may be something like my mother’s office, which is attached to a much bigger facility with several rooms and a kitchen. Several people are mulling about, preparing for what I later realize is dinner.

I am sitting comfortably in a La-Z-Boy® recliner, when several adults walk in the room with two little girls around age 2, a blonde Caucasian and an Asian. They are both dressed in onesie pajamas, the blonde in pink and the Asian in black. One of the caregivers carries the two girls over to me and seats them both on my lap. I understand that these are orphans in need of a home.

“What’s your name?” I ask the one to my left.

“Amanda,” the girl in pink answers.

“And what’s your name?” I ask the other.

“Amanda,” she says, smiling.

The blonde girl squirms to the floor, and the Asian morphs into an Asian boy around the age of 5. He is abnormally limber and performs several acrobatic tricks, the likes of which I had never seen. Everyone’s eyes are on the child as he twists and contorts and lands in a spectacularly articulated finale. Applause follows from the present onlookers.

The little boy approaches one of his caregivers and asks, “Will I ever die?”

The bewildered man says, “No… I don’t think so.” Uncertain of the proper response to such a question, the caregiver turns to me and asks, “Should I have told him yes?”

I begin to recount the story of young prince Siddhartha, and how his father carefully sheltered him from the knowledge of illness and death. Siddhartha’s first glimpse at the sight of a dying old man had a cataclysmic effect on his emotional well-being. I conclude, “Truth is best.”

I motion for the little boy to come to me. He spins and flips and stands in an impossible posture, his body behaving like elastic, expanding in length. Then he walks over to me.

“You have been given a great gift. Your body and mind can achieve many amazing and wonderful things. But there will come a day when you will no longer have this body. Most people get to keep their bodies for 70 to 100 years.”

Amanda, the blonde girl, comes in and asks me to talk about myself. “What would you like me to say?” I stand up, pick her up, and carry her into the kitchen, where my parents and others are preparing food, as she answers me by reciting a nursery rhyme all about me.

Dinner is ready. I pass the table of food and, still carrying the child, open the door to another room to check on my own kids, twin teenagers.

“Hey Dad,” Franklyn says, digging into a huge wheel of cheese. “Do you like Limburger?”

Dreamsign Catalogue:

1. Inner awareness (1/3)

• The scene takes place in what may be something like my mother’s office, which is attached to a much bigger facility with several rooms and a kitchen.

2. Action (1/8)

• she answered me by reciting a nursery rhyme all about me.

3. Form (3/7)

• The scene takes place in what may be something like my mother’s office, which is attached to a much bigger facility with several rooms and a kitchen.
• The blonde girl squirms to the floor, and the Asian morphs into an Asian boy around the age of 5.
• He spun and flipped and stood in an impossible conceivable posture, and his body behaved like elastic, expanding in length.

4. Context (1/7)

• “Hey Dad,” Franklyn said, digging into a huge wheel of cheese. “Do you like Limburger?”

WAKING NOTE:

I shared this dream with my fiancé. We had talked about possible adoption if I am not able to provide her with children. I had a vasectomy at age 26, after having 4 boys. Now, at 40, we are discussing options. Teresa mentioned that the content of the dream reminded her of a conversation she and I had with my mom on separate occasions. My grandmother is beginning to show signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. My mother seems, for the first time in her life, to be waking up to the reality of death. Like her, I have never lost anyone close to me. My fiancé, on the other hand, who is only 25 years old, lost her father several years ago. Such a profound loss changes us. Without loss, there is no knowledge or experience.

Intuition and lucid dreaming

What is intuition?

According to Google, intuition is a noun that means the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. The origin of the word is Latin, denoting spiritual insight or immediate inner seeing.

For those of us on a quest into the inner world of the self, this is a concept worth exploring. Intuition belongs to the subconscious, like a knowing or truthful belief. Lucid dreaming is the ability to consciously interact with this inner world, and perhaps to access hidden treasures that for most people, through cultural conditioning or ignorance, is unattainable.

Paul McCartney hears the melody of “Yesterday” in a dream.

I prefer to believe that all things are within the realm of the possible, and that lucid dreaming is a way to explore the reservoir of genius, wisdom, and even perennial truth. After all, where did Galileo, Bach, Mozart, Edison, and McCartney achieve greatness? Were they just lucky? Or did they tap into something accessible to us all?

They tapped into themselves first, and shared their discoveries with the rest of the world in the form of self-expression.

Who is to say what you can or cannot do? Who is to determine the length and breadth of your accomplishments while in this brief life of waking and sleeping? What authority is to proclaim that these two modes of experience are mutually exclusive? As a dreamer in life, should you not live in such a way as to enhance your dreams? And what should come of riches inside your the dream world? Should they not also expand your waking life?

Our world is a mystery. Life is a mystery. And dreams have been far too important, revered, studied, worshiped, and interpreted for them to be of no good use. They are not meaningless, as Aristotle first proposed, or the ancients wouldn’t have used them to predict possible outcomes, heal the sick, and communicate with the gods. Dreams are not the simple effects of random neural firings, as suggested by Alan Hobson and Robert McCarley in 1977, or their contents would be devoid of artistic richness and logic, as in the example of the musician from Liverpool, who first heard the melody of “Yesterday” in a dream.

Dreams are a way to approach your hidden genius. So convinced that he had subconsciously plagiarized the melody of “Yesterday” before dreaming it in its entirety, Paul McCartney played it for friends and associates for about a month, asking if they had heard it anywhere. “Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it” (Paul McCartney quote from Wikipedia).

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” – John Lennon

5 stages of sleep

“The typical dreamer, after waking, has no more idea where he spent the night than an amnesiac drunk.” – Robert Moss

Simply put, there are 2 phases of sleep: quiet and active. There are 5 stages to the sleep cycle. Stages 1 – 4 are quiet, and stage 5 is active.

Let’s walk through the 5 stages of the sleep cycle as they occur.

Stage 1 is the part of your sleep cycle when you are getting drowsy. The eyes are closing, and your body is preparing for the Land of Nod. This stage usually lasts no more than about 10 minutes. It is a transition between sleeping and wakefulness. Your brain is experiencing theta waves, which are low frequency.

From here, you move on to stage 2, which is a light sleep. The brain waves produce bursts of rapid activity called “sleep spindles”. The body temperature decreases and the heart rate slows down. This stage lasts about 20 minutes.

Stage 3 is a transitional stage between stages 2 and 4, and the most significant change between them are the brain waves moving into deep, slow, delta waves.

Stage 4 is the deepest of sleeps, which lasts about 30 minutes. Here, sleepwalking, sleeptalking, and bedwetting can occur.

After you move through each of these stages, you repeat stages 2 and 3. Then we move on to stage 5, which is REM (Rapid Eye Movement). Here is where dreaming takes place, and where our playground of interest lies. This is the environment of the Oneironaut.

Stage 5 is a dream state, where the muscles in your body become paralyzed, but heart rate, brain activity, and breathing are very active. It takes about 90 minutes to reach this initial stage during the cycle, from the time you lie down until you reach REM sleep.

Source: http://www.LucidDreamExplorers.com/dreamscience/

From here, you go back through the stages before repeating stage 5. As the night progresses, your REM stage lengthens while your delta, or stage 4 decreases. You will likely go through about 4 or 5 of these cycles in a given night.

For more information on the sleep stages, go here, here, or here.

Diagnostic value of dreams

The Iroquois, among other indeginous peoples, believed that anyone not in touch with their dreams were not in touch with their soul. I am fascinated with the idea that dreams are a window into this “soul world”, or subconscious plane. (I use soul and subconscious interchangeably).

I have learned from experience and through psychology and self-help studies that the outcomes or results of our lives, which make up our life situation, are born from actions and behaviors, which in turn, originate from our subconscious beliefs about ourselves and our world. In other words, our souls drive us. If our dream states have anything to teach us about this powerful inner world that conducts the major portion of the work of attracting and repelling things into and from our lives, this could be one more tool in our belt for self improvement.

In the Bible, dreams were held in great esteem. Joseph was a dreamer, and he could interpret accurately the dreams of the Pharaoh. Here’s a thought: what if Pharaoh was a lucid dreamer? Would he have been better equipped to interpret his own dreams? Who knows his mind better than himself? Joseph no doubt took context clues from Pharaoh’s life situation, and related his dreamscapes to these waking realities. Can we not do the same today?

Why did I dream of my son as a 2-year-old the other night? Possibly because last month we got into a pretty heated conflict about me leaving him when I divorced his mom, and he is still not over it. Now at almost 20 years old, he feels he was cheated by losing his father in the house. And I feel guilt. Therefore, I dream of my son as a baby, and how wonderful it would be to start again.

Why did I dream of Chris the photographer being angry about not getting paid? Because she is photographic my upcoming wedding, and her fee is still in my pocket. Granted, the wedding is a month and a half away, but it’s on my mind to pay her.

Freud said that dreams are tools for wish fulfillment and conflict resolution. But what if there’s more to it? What if our dreams give us hints to the deeper meaning of our lives (through diagnosing our beliefs about ourselves)? Now, meaning is subjective and is assigned based on our personality, desires, social/religious paradigm, etc. It seems to me that this is all the more reason why dream work is a valid and beneficial tool for discovering unconscious desires and habits as well as the conditions in which we find ourselves. Does this not lead us toward the highest work of humankind– to improve, to grow, to self-actualize?

Given the gravity and emphasis that the ancients put on dreams, it seems to me they have at least as much meaning as waking life, albeit mysterious.

 

SIDE NOTE: My fiancé and I paid Chris this week for her services as our wedding photographer. She was in a poor mood, just as she had been in my dream. This could possibly reveal that, like my prediction about Teresa eating Frito’s yesterday, I had an unconscious realization that Chris would be in a bad mood. Or it could be coincidental.