Dream experience seems to defy physics, but how did the dreaming mind come to be able to make up such seemingly illogical events as occur in our dreams?
Memories of before this existence?
It comes from another plane that doesn’t have the same restrictions?
Basically yes to both statements. There is a grammar the mind uses innately, a structure or logic that is inherent to consciousness itself. It structures our perception in ways that our brain can digest, so to speak. We don’t invent it and no one actually learns it. It’s more something we instinctively recognize, like recognizing that we are looking at another human face.
There is no real difference between what your brain does while you dream, and what it does while you are awake and looking around. But there is an apparent difference isn’t there? Things do seem different between the two states?
One part of my mind doesn’t translate the dream part well. Because those parts of your mind are taken up with the process we call cognition, imagination or creativity. One way we know we are awake is seeing things doesn’t feel like a creative act. We don’t believe that we actually have to make it happen. Is this not so?
That’s true. We are observers, as we call it. And we don’t really observe our thoughts. We more or less do our thinking and even think our doing. But do you have to think about or make up what you are doing while you dream? Unless I mistake other people’s experience, dreaming has more in common with being awake than it does with thinking.
It does seem more laborious at times. Often moving in a dream is like moving in quicksand. Ah, I see. Yes. I sometimes experience that also. A different sense of coherence and continuity.
And of course there are those times you are trying to drive from the back seat. One of the aspects of dream experience is the seemingly literal expression of metaphor.
Or I have had dreams where I am trying to kick but can’t, or my punches couldn’t push through a wet paper bag. Your mind knows it doesn’t have access to the body at that time, or has only limited access, but sleep walkers encounter no such issue. But, I ask you this, is there anything in waking life that doesn’t also fit a metaphor?
I don’t think so. Hence writing and poetry uses it so often to describe life. It’s annoying when the metaphors are too vague. That is why we have the waking state of being, to disambiguate these experiences.
It’s easy to say. Oh, think about how the metaphor applies to your life and it’s not like you can show someone else your dream. I see what you are saying, and it actually underscores the blurred border between dreaming metaphor and waking experience. You can’t show them while awake but people often do have inter-related dreams.
Simplification? Yes. The waking state is more simple.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~