Dreams: The Meaning of Dreaming Awake or Asleep
The Importance of the Neocortex on Dreams
The neocortex is responsible for storing details when it comes to dreams. It focuses on logic ( things we can understand in waking life). Thus, details such as the location where the dream took place, the people present, and the themed colours and words said are often stored in the neocortex and allow us to create a narrative of our dream. Dreams are usually challenging to remember because the hippocampus, which is responsible for storing memory, cannot communicate with the neocortex while asleep. Thus, the memory becomes disjointed. Dreams often can only be experienced as they are happening. However, I would like to believe that with practice and focus of the mind, we can develop a strong connection between the hippocampus and neocortex to remember our dreams more fully upon waking.
The Relationships between the Waking State and the Dream State
Dreams occur in a state of lost awareness. We enter a lucid world of possibilities, where our Soul traverses multiple spaces, images, and thoughts in a profound illusionary form. As we Dream, our body organs function slowly, and the mind acts independently, without input from the body or the person sleeping. The mind runs wild.
Dreams are the perfect opportunity to truly embody and experience the Soul and what it truly wants to feel without the restrictions of the material world or body. Laws of Nature do not apply in the dream state, and most of the time, they appear as Hallucinations, providing an almost prophetic or clairvoyant experience.
In early civilizations, dreams were considered a mediumship, a conversation between humans and gods.
I would still consider this accurate, as God exists in every form, light, and living vibrating atom. Thus, when communicating with our unconscious and subconscious, we communicate with our inner God, uncovering hidden meanings in our dreams' symbology, images, emotions, and colours.
Our experiences in our waking state often manifest in our dreams. We experience our dreams in various forms, whether that be an emotional stimulus, a trigger by memory, or a connection to the health of our physical bodies. Dreams occur in a state of lost awareness. Our body's organs and functionalities slow down, and our soul and spirit become lighter. Our minds are free and open to act independently without our conscious input, and thus, we are taken for a ride through illusions and hallucinations.
Some experts have found that people's dreams reflect the conditions in their waking life. If they are generally happy, content, and at peace, their dreams will be upbeat, fluid and euphoric. If they are usually in a negative state, their dreams are found to be chaotic, erratic, fearful and stressful. People can also experience episodic memories. This is where we dream about something that happened in the past while we were awake, although the memory seems manipulated or fragmented. The dream memory does not quite match the past memory we experienced in the waking state.
When we dream, the communication between the hippocampus ( where we store memory) and the neocortex (where we store detailed events and logical situations) is disrupted. Thus, when we transition from a dream state to a waking state, we can experience bits and pieces of a memory that manifests as a dream to create a narrative. When we are asleep, the hippocampus is unavailable; thus, dreams and memories are patchy and mirage-like upon waking from that dream.
Many ancient civilizations believed dreams were a divine passage to communicate with Gods and Demons. Though expert scientists have trouble proving this phenomenon, there has been agreeance to experiencing psychic excitation sources. This is where our waking day manifests in our dreams. However, Freud's research on neuroses suggests digging a little deeper that psychic excitation is a fantasy manifested internally through an ego battle or subconscious suppression of conflict. In many cultures and religions, God is said to be the light source within the soul, thus the communication between God and Demons would be happening within as Freud's theory suggests.
Dreams and Psychology
Our dreams and overall sleep quality can explain much of our Psychology and existential meaning in life.
For example, when I was younger, between the ages of 4 and 12, I often experienced night terrors involving the Bug Species. Whether human heads would turn into massive fly heads, or I would sometimes have this reoccurring dream where I was in my bedroom, in the dark, and bugs were starting to come out of every corner, reaching where I was standing, and I would be unable to get out.
Now, looking back to those night terrors, I realize that my dreams were quite prophetic as I had dealt with similar bug circumstances when I travelled to Asia and a bug storm in my apartment invaded me, and in my daily living where I am constantly dealing with bug infestations in my apartment. - It is humorous but engaging to note how your dreams reflect your waking life.
Our deep sleep is this unexplainable void where our muscles regenerate, we heal our minds, and we wake up very well-rested. There is no attachment to anything, just emptiness, like a reset for our body, mind, and Soul.
In our Waking state, our organs work at their normal rate, our minds are active, and we are aware of every sensation that we are experiencing.
This experience is how we know that we are not asleep but awake.
However, there are times when the two blend together.
The Hippocampus is the organ that stores Memory. Now, dreams are fragmented memories that create a lucid dialogue. During Rem Sleep, we experience moments when we fall asleep or are about to wake up. At times, we can be awake in our dreams. You are completely aware that you are dreaming and can maneuver with awareness through the dream state.
This dream yoga takes a lot of practice and involves working through several unconscious fears, but it is when our waking state blends with our dream state. Our Hippocampus can store information and not let it go, as it actively does during REM Sleep.
Several factors can also create a sense of always being awake in your dreams, such as:
Trauma in the Waking State
Stress
Medications
Illness
Sleep disorders
Dreams and Spirituality
However, Spiritually, I believe that those souls who have traversed several storms in their waking lives have had to learn to not only walk through the fire of the trauma stored in their unconscious but also overcome and reach enlightenment. As a result, this has helped them heal the trauma, know the feeling of the experience, and thus be able to control being awake in their dreams more readily.
As a working Psychic, I see my dream state enter my waking state often as I experience Clairvoyant Images and Visions during my sessions with clients or simply during meditation or Reiki healing.
Clairvoyancy is a form of hallucination created by the fragmented memories stored in your Hippocampus and the Ego attachments we share collectively through our given sensations.
Several times, I experienced prophetic clairvoyant visions that I could not remember if they were dreams or memories.
Who is to say we cannot access the illusionary dream state with more practice, awareness and intention?
As Psychologist Carl Jung said, "Just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, new contents, which have never yet been conscious, can arise from it. For instance, one may have an inkling that something is on the point of breaking into Consciousness—that "something is in the air" or that one "smells a rat." The discovery that the unconscious is no mere depository of the past is also full of germs of future psychic situations and ideas."
