Brain scientists have discovered that during dreams, the brain is electrically active just like when we are awake. However, it is active in a chemically different way. Certain chemicals present during wakefulness are halved during dreamless sleep and are completely absent during dream sleep. And so science explains that dreaming is just a byproduct of these chemical changes in the brain. This seems to be linked to the philosophical idea of ​​materialism that the world of physical matter is the only world that exists. This states that in order to understand anything, including subjective consciousness, we only need to see it in terms of physics and chemistry.

On the contrary, Sigmund Freud believed that dream content is significant. He thought that it covertly reveals something about our unconscious feelings and thoughts. For example, unrealistic or embarrassing worries and concerns, which we would prefer to avoid raising awareness.

Many therapists today no longer trace all those hidden impulses back to a sexual origin like Freud did. However, they see dreaming as the mind creating a dramatic representation of the dreamer’s life. Everything in the dream scene is a symbolic expression of something to do with the dreamer. They can be places, things or other figures. In other words, the dream is not just a hodgepodge of nonsense into which one could read almost anything. But rather something worth careful thought that potentially provides self-knowledge.

So is it true that dreams show the real me? Who I am?

Mind chatter in waking life

Whether the contents of dreams are significant or not, it seems to be true that we have an enormous capacity in waking life for what has been called “mind chatter.” We only have to try to start a meditation program before we realize how difficult it can be to still the mind. It is because there is a constant stream of sensation, thought, and feeling outside of conscious awareness; numerous half-born ideas, images, moods, fragments of memory, etc.

Symbolic costume in dreams

Everyone can recognize that strange things happen in dreams. Emotions are powerful. The scenes can be threatening. People we know can become judges or juries, our house can acquire a dark basement that we did not suspect before, our cat can start attacking us. If dreams represent inner concerns, why do familiar objects in dreams function as symbols of something else? Why can’t dreams be more direct?

Like Freud, I would suggest that the answer is that we have desires that would be unacceptable to our conscious minds and would meet with social approval if they ever came into public view in the light of day. Elements of our inner life that we do not like to acknowledge to ourselves and much less to others. For example, I can get aggressive even though I don’t want to admit it. The apparent truth about me hurts. I want to be protected from that.

Self-identification with the contents of consciousness

Transpersonal psychologist Steve Taylor observes that in waking life most of the time we identify with our thoughts. It seems that we cannot easily part with them. We allow what we think to determine our state of mind and our sense of self-worth. I would say that also when we become aware of our fantasies, we also tend to identify with them.

Similarly, we tend to believe that the ideas and images we experience in our dreams are our own. Because this is what we believe, we are often ashamed of the images, actions, and feelings we remember upon waking.

But what if they are not ours? What if they enter our heads from another place? Perhaps our minds are simply acting as receptors. We would not blame a radio set for the material it emits. Just the person who was transmitting. In other words, perhaps we are not what we think. We are not what we see in our mind’s eye. According to this point of view, it is definitely a mistake to equate our own character with what we dream of.

“You are not your thoughts. I know it sounds crazy, if you’re only hearing that for the first time… I mean your thoughts are in your head… they’re in your voice (usually)… no one else can hear them…it’s pretty convincing to believe those thoughts are yours.” (Victoria Ward Harley Street Therapist and Trainer)

sleeping rationality in dreams

When we’re dreaming, times, places, and people change strangely without warning: strange inconsistencies and discontinuities are normal. Emotion is exaggerated, thinking is illogical and directionless, self-awareness is diminished. The sense of decision making and choice is greatly reduced.

Without rationality I cannot make informed decisions. It seems reasonable that I should not be blamed for something that was not rationally intended. And so, I conclude that I am not responsible for what I accidentally dream.

Our natural tendencies

If the dream serves a useful function, it is certainly telling us something about our plight. The useless inclinations we can indulge in, what natural tendencies we should avoid, how we feel, what we need, what consequences of current attitudes might arise. All the possibilities that are in line with our inner life. But only possibilities. It’s not news. Not necessarily the real me.

Conclusion on dreams

Just as we don’t have to identify with our thoughts, we don’t have to identify with our dreams either. But they can help us learn about life.

“That a person has no egoism when the will is removed is evident from the dream. In the dream, the voluntary part is absent, so that one has no control over any part individually, but the whole body lies at command. of involuntary impulses. For this reason, one is then not responsible for anything, for being asleep”. (Emanuel Swedenborg)