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The White Hindu has moved! This blog is no longer updated, but Ambaa is still writing The White Hindu every weekday at Patheos.com.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

What Do Dreams Mean?

What do you think causes us to dream when we sleep? What is the purpose?

Is it the brain processing all the input from our day? Is it messages from the divine? Is it a way of predicting the future? A way of understanding what's going on in our psyche?

I've always been curious about dreams, wondering what purpose they serve. When I was growing up I was told to focus on the present and pay no attention to dreams. But it seems like they must be there for a reason.

I have frequent and very vivid dreams. Some themes come up again and again and I wonder about what they might be trying to tell me.

Only once have I had a lucid dream, the ability to realize I'm dreaming and start controlling things. Usually when I suspect I'm dreaming, I try to wake up and I very frequently experience thinking that I've woken up when I haven't. There's usually at least three or four layers of this trying to wake up, being sure that now I'm awake, and being wrong.

I've often heard dreams used as a metaphor for how our soul is. That we are like someone asleep, enjoying a dream, but not realizing how wonderful our real life is and that we should wake up to it.

Is that the only reason we dream? To help us understand that simile?

A week or so ago I woke up distressed from a dream in which half my teeth had fallen out. I had never had a dream like it. Today I Googled it and was told that this can be a symbol of experiencing change and a new chapter in life with some trepidation. Pretty accurate, I'd say, considering that I just turned 30.

4 comments:

  1. Happy birthday! <3

    Dreams can be frivilous, meaningless things...stuff which bubbles up from the television and daily conversations we have witnessed.

    Like that horrible dream about the teeth. I have had that very same dream years ago. I was kinda going out of control...things turning in my life which seemed almost unable to direct.(ex husband)

    I even had hundreds of dreams about over flowing toilets...sometimes dozens all lined up and over flowing. Again all speaking of that moment of losing control of a situation.

    Also,sometimes...profound dreams can bring a message. My mother came to me in a dream in 2002, a year after her death. She was cutting strawberries. HUGE ones...the size of her head. She looked at me and smiled...then said so sincerely. "Lanie...the ones from India are better..." Then she pointed to a green shrivled one...it was unripe, bitter...very tiny. Then handed me the huge one from India.

    Sometimes dreams usher in wonderful things. <3

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    1. Thanks! And yes, sometimes dreams are clearly nothing more than something one heard during the day.

      You know, I had forgotten about the dreams I had after my best friend died. I had dreams every night for months where she talked to me, emailed me, called me. She told me she was okay.

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  2. I believe more often than not, our dreams have meanings! I very often have dreams of death recently before the passing of close family, work out complex personal problems while I'm sleeping/dreaming and get (what I believe) are answers to my prayers in my dreams--which is actually how I decided to go to grad school, and which school to go to, and finally found my Hindu name, after years of searching and contemplating.

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    1. Very cool! I need to give my dreams more credit and maybe they will reveal more to me.

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