Greetings, readers. It is not uncommon for me to have vivid dreams that I remember almost in their entirety every now and then. However, it seems that the last several nights in a row my brain has been working overtime. I’ve been told that there are two schools of thought about dreams. One is that they are always symbolic to something in your life, and the other is that it is just your brain firing and that the dreams mean absolutely nothing. I believe choice number one. That it is a way for us to work out issues in our lives.
The dreams I’ve had over the years have been filled with people I know, in situations I know, and in some circumstances I’ve completely relived happy memories from childhood. On the other hand, some dreams are sketchy, with people I don’t know, and they are set in dark and sinister places. As you can imagine, those are not my favorite dreams.
I shall share with you now one example of each. My favorite dream starts out a little bit on the scary side as I’m walking on a misty night, and I come to a huge tower-shaped hotel. Once inside, I am walking around brightly lit corridors with pretty pictures on the wall, fancy doorknobs and a hallway leading to either an indoor swimming pool or to the stern of a luxury cruise ship. I immediately jump into the hot tub and relax. Is my mind telling me to jump in water? Or am I going back to an earlier time in my life where I had the opportunity to enjoy things like an indoor pool membership or something fancy like that? I’ve had this dream with both destinations several times in the last fifteen years.
The other kind of dream, the one that is much more frightening, is the one where I’m walking on a very narrow road that I seem to know, but when I wake up I know it is completely unfamiliar. Is this road near my camp in Maine, or somewhere closer to home? After some time of walking, I get to what appears to be Bear Spring Camps, where I vacation every summer. My family and friends are all there but the cabins and the layout are completely different. Some are much fancier than they are in real life. My cabin is dark and dreary with not much light, and a rickety old bed. It almost feels like a tool shed. How did I get this lucky, to get one of the worst cabins? During this dream, I feel very uncomfortable in this place. I try to leave but I am continually drawn to it. From the outside it is a very small cabin but it has many more rooms than it should have, each darker than the next. Have I ever awakened screaming from this dream? No. I don’t think I’ve ever finished searching the cabin. Perhaps one day. I’m almost certain that my therapist would interpret this to be a searching dream, that I am looking for something that I haven’t found yet. In the past twelve months, I’ve had this dream almost exactly the same way three or four times. I guess we can call that a recurring dream.
What do you believe? Do you believe dreams are nothing more than the brain firing at night, or do you think every dream is symbolic and means something for your life? Post a comment down below or on Facebook and let me know what you think.
Tomorrow is going to be a day off, both Rebecca and I have important errands outside the office. I will try very hard to put up a short blog entry sometime this weekend to make up for tomorrow.
So until soonest, take care, enjoy your day, and happy reading.
josephmkockelmans 