Dreams encourage us to reach beyond our limits, and to somehow fulfill even our wildest of expectations. They give us space to create something entirely unrealistic each night when we go to bed and shut off the lights. Yet, somehow our dreams are more than just jumbled thoughts, scrambled by our brains and reinterpreted in luminescent color. Dreams are fascinating, and they contain meaning. And dreams aren’t solely limited to the images we have while we are sleeping. In fact, as you’ll soon see, they can be much, much more.
In the above example, shared from my childhood, I recall that daydreaming has always been very natural to me. Slipping out of reality for a moment or two, to glimpse into some imagined future, was a regular occurrence for me. Part of this could be blamed on my curious imagination, the other part on my lack of interest in routine subject matter. That’s to say that I was always interested in the deeper truths surrounding our human experience and would often get lost in thought exploring these ideas.
My interest in dreaming primarily arose because of my vivid imagination, my love of learning, and my quest to understand truth. There’s a thin line between dreams and reality, and there’s an even thinner divide between truth and obscurity. However, just like distinctions between human understanding, dreams can take on many various forms. Throughout this book we will be examining what these forms look like, where they come from, and their importance to our larger discussion. The natural questions that flow forth will lead us to new insights and new discoveries. It will also lead us to a more concrete and interesting subject matter in the next chapter, which will discuss more on why these topics are so important.
What is Dreaming?
Dreaming is usually referred to as a particular state of consciousness that occurs while we sleep each night. Some people remember their dreams, while others don’t. However, everyone can universally agree that this is an altered state of consciousness. Dreaming is actually one of the first gateways into exploring this interesting subject, because it is so prevalent, and starts when we are in our youth. This then begs the question: what exactly is consciousness, and how are there different levels of consciousness?
The Depths of the Mind: Conscious Awareness
Consciousness is the awareness that an individual has of his or her self, and their surroundings. This entails certain givens such as knowing you are physically in a body, where you are geographically located, and what you are feeling with your five senses. The ability to understand and process these data points, makes us conscious of not only ourselves, but also of the world around us. When an individual is conscious, they are aware of everyday life and the phenomena that are usually within the bounds of normal human experience. However, there are other states of consciousness we all have varying degrees of access to, which is where this conversation begins to get interesting. If you’ve ever fainted, experienced déjà vu (to be discussed in a later update), a lucid dream, or had revelations during prayer, fasting, yoga, or meditation, then you are most likely aware of the phenomena which accompany them.
Exploring Intuition: Are Things Supposed to Happen?
The more we dive into understanding what consciousness is, the deeper we must also explore that consciousness isn’t simply a “yes,” or “no” box to check. There are differing levels or “states” of consciousness that can occur within our human bodies. This large range of phenomena makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly what consciousness is and makes the exploration of what it can be much more fun to uncover. Since, being conscious means to be aware of our existence in our physical bodies and of our environments, it presupposes that anything that interferes or enhances this awareness is a natural extension of consciousness, itself.