Saturday, January 22, 2011

Dreams

Our brains are extremely complex organisms, which are still largely unexplored in many areas. One area that intrigues me is the subconscious or unconscious thought process which takes place when we sleep. I guess most people call it "dreaming" There are dreams, and then there are DREAMS. I think they take many different forms and possibilities.



I surely wish I could remember everything I had ever dreamed. Sort of like having a little "hard drive" built in to my brain where I could push the "save" button every time I start to go to sleep. I also wish that I could dream some of the things I WANT to dream about. I wish we could dictate to our brains the "script" of what we want to start out with in our dreams, and let them go forward from there. One thing I really wish I could dream about is running. I would just love to run across the country, sort of like Forrest Gump did. Running on and on and seeing things that I have never seen before. Taking the time to appreciate things which I have never appreciated before. Chances are slim of me ever running again in real life. Not for very long anyway. What with a suspect ticker, and being out of shape like I am, it seems a near impossibility. So, I am stuck with the hope that I can have a great dream about running some time.



I listen to music while I am lying down trying to sleep, and the other day I was in and out of it, and I began to actually see the musical notes in my mind. I was listening to Enya I think, and on all of the notes I saw silver and gold patterns in my head. The chords were like sunbursts and moon glow. The voice of the singers, which was angelic in nature, flowed through my mind like a deep blue river, rushing towards the ocean. No, I was NOT on anything! This was dreaming, and it was the strangest and most wonderful dreaming I can remember in quite a long, long time. I wasn't deep asleep; I was just sort of in a land somewhere far enough away from reality for things to ecstatically good. I am not sure that I will ever get a repeat of the "unreal" concert. I didn't want to "wake up"



On a very rare occasion, I dream of times past and of people who are now gone from this life. You would think this might be more common type of dream. But, for me at least, it is very uncommon. I think maybe you have more and more of the dreams like this as you get older, because more of the people you have loved and known in your life start to leave. I dream of my Grandmother occasionally, most of the time in the kitchen cooking! I can still smell the biscuits cooking, and in the back of my mind I wish I had gotten her to teach me how to make them! My mind yearns for a trip back. For just one more day, as Mitch Albom has so sweetly expressed in his book. One more day to say things that should have said, but always thought I would have time to say. But, I didn't.



I used to help her sometimes and it was during this period of interaction that I learned a great deal about here philosophy of life. A lot of hard work mainly, but a lot of love for life too. When she had here 90th birthday, I asked her if she had it to go over again what one thing would she do or not do. She told me simply "Worry less, because worry never did change nothing!" It still doesn't Grandma, it still doesn't!



It's just a shame that we can't step into these kinds of dreams anytime we want to, and visit with our loved ones who are no longer with us. It's also a shame that we don't realize that some of the loved ones who are still with us now, may soon be a memory. We should tell THEM the things we need to, before it's too late, and we can only visit them every once in a while in our dreams.



I really haven't had any BAD dreams recently. Nothing which I would call a nightmare, or anything even resembling a bad dream. Most of the dreams we have, we never remember.



Maybe when I lie down tonight and turn on the music CD's, I will get lucky again and my brain will begin to remember that great dream from the other day. I sure hope so.

3 comments:

ItsJustMe said...

Hello!
Just think of how FULL our minds would be if we could remember EVERYTHING we dreamed about. I do wish I could remember, vividly, the dreams I've had about my deceased parents. I love to "visit" with them in my sleep. As an only child, I have no-one to share "stories" with of growing up so the majority of my memories are gone with my parents. Had I known then, what I do now, I would have written a daily journal of each and every day in my youth, a diary of sorts, to capture the milestones that I can no longer remember. It would have come in handy when my 21-year old daughter asks me questions about my youth. At least I remember that I was happy!

Your Grandma was absolutely correct about worrying - I live by an inspirational Mary Engelbreit illustration that literally changed the direction of my thinking in life. It reads: "Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles -- it empties today of its strength". I'm a much calmer person for having read that!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts - enjoy your day!

Audrey

Gina said...

Hi Cherry! Thanks for stopping by my blog for the OWOH event. I loved your post about the happy puppy in your life.

Then I read your post about dreams. I started studying dreams when I was very young. My mom gave me a great book when I was 18 about Edgar Cayce. Now a lot of people get uncomfortable when you talk about anyone who "channels" but the information in that book about dreams put my life in order. I used to have prophetic dreams and they were always about someone dying. Reading that book gave me whole new insights about dreams and even to this day, after studying many other points of view, I remember Cayce's help with dreams. You CAN script a dream. There's dream induction and lucid dreaming where you consciously change the direction of a dream. I'm not going to tell you how to view dreams but I would encourage you to study all you can about them. They are your guides to how you really feel and think, the thoughts and feelings we often ignore, either because they're painful to face or we're taught at an early age to ignore them. Dreams can be great fun too and I think the best ones are the ones you approach playfully. I used to be with a group that wanted to have group dreams. For some reason, that never really appealed to me and I couldn't get into it but it was fun to read about other people's experiences.

Have fun exploring the OWOH event!
:-) Gina

Lynn said...

Cherry, you have a special gift and talent when it comes to writing! Your words are powerful and expressional and leave quite an impression.
Thankyou for your thoughts and allowing us into your life:)
huggs
Lynn xx