Reading Chapter 5, I felt left out. All these odd sleeping conditions I've never been a victim of makes me pity my youthfulness. On my To Do List, I have yet to: Be abducted by aliens, awake without the ability to move, fall asleep randomly, and enjoy a night-terror. On this blog, I'm going to talk about everything but drugs and hypnosis because that was booooring.
Having the sleep cycle explained helped my understanding of dreams and sufficient sleep. It makes sense to me how during the first 2 cycles we are in deep sleep, aka stages 3 & 4. But as we lighten up towards the end, the sleep cycle tapers off from stage 2, we're ready to function by 6 hours of sleep which explains why despite my lack of sleep, i still wake up and feel completely rejuvenated. So what if i die sooner, at least i'll have lived. I feel the later i sleep, the more fatigued i feel and the sooner i fall asleep the next evening. I like that better, I'm going to keep staying up late =D. Now Lucid dreaming is something that I frequently do. It's always that stage when dreams become visual, I'll hit the bridge (which i just learned is called Lucid Dreaming) and just lie there and try to let the dream finish on a good note. Like, I'll know i'm dreaming but i just want to know how it ends, gahh frusturating.
When I was younger, I was part of the percentile the sleep-walked frequently. I would take trips to the bathroom, except never reach the bathroom at all. In the morning, I'd be informed of the mess I'd created and just laugh innocently about it because it was while i was sleeping.
As much as I want to believe Freud about symbolism in dreams, I must face the truth and realize they don't mean anything beyond what my imagination can conjure. I think that's the beauty of dreams, to think they mean more than they actually do. Like a horoscope, but metaphysical, not pseudoscience. Most of my dreams that I remember are about my ex, so I'm guessing that dreams are about desires of the subconcious- or the stream of consciousness as our book describes. Just like in dreams, we only remember things that stand out to us, because it's important. Neurocognitive theory suggests we can only dream about what we know. Our biased minds are limited to our emotions. I feel like I was better off not knowing this =( Chapter 5, thanks for proving everything I thought I knew about dreams wrong
I have an issue with the idea that we can only really dream about what we know. I recently had very vivid dreams of total strangers. I guess there's a possiblity that they're people I've seen before in passing--like at a mall, or a speech meet, or a choir contest, or something. But do we really encode so many faces as to just be able to spit them out when our brains fire randomly and then tries to make sense of the signals?
ReplyDeleteAs for believing they mean more than they actually do, if a dream can help you out in some way, why not believe in it? For instance, looking up dream symbols sometimes forces me to reckon with what's happening in my life.
Nice blog, Marco--I enjoyed it. :)
I totally agree with what Katrina is talking about. About a week ago I had a very detailed dream that I was in Mexico at a resort swimming in the pool with people I have never met. This interests me because I have never been to Mexico, or outside of the country for that matter.
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked up the meaning in my sister's dream book it said that if you dream of water you are stressed about something. Therefore, I concluded that I was stressed I wasn't going to Mexico for spring break.. agh.
Love the blog Marco!