Dreams can be a path to knowing ourselves better

At the time of writing this post I have yet to find a universally agreed theory as to why we dream.  There are many theories, and I will list a few of these here over the next few entries.  But a more important question I think needs to be addressed, and that is, do our dreams have any real meaning, and is there any point in even trying to understand them?  To this question I would answer a resounding “yes.”  I know this through my direct experience, and the shared experience of others.

Of course there are those who disagree with me, and they are entitled to.  By dismissing dreams as “random firings of the brain” or simply an evolutionary mechanism that developed to help us process information, I do feel that these people are missing a valuable opportunity in life to know themselves better. 

We do know from research that when we are learning a new skill, such as a new language or a musical instrument, that we dream more.  Dreams do help us remember and understand, without dreaming our learning and memory functions become impaired.  It is worth bearing in mind when reading scientific dream research, that this kind of study is often undertaken by rational, logical, left-brained people, who start from an inherently skeptical position.  This is as science should be!  But when these people deny the magical, emotive, creative, intuitive experience of the right-brained activity of dreaming by seeking to explain it away, I must jump to dreams defense!  Dreams can help us understand ourselves better, and to know oneself I believe is an ideal worth striving for. 

Rationally, to value only left-brained activity over right-brained is to only experience half of life.  Both are important and essential to our survival.  But more profoundly, to deny the existence of a rich and valuable inner world is to cut yourself off from the spirit of humanity, the magic of imagination that feeds our souls through music, art, and the stories of our history in myths and legends.  Our inner world, where dreams, imagination and creativity live, feeds our emotions, gives us the ability to grow and evolve, the ability to heal ourselves, the ability to know love.  To insist that human beings are simply a bundle of learned responses, evolutionary mechanisms and survival instincts, no more than pure biological creatures, is to deny yourself a life of wonder, meaningfulness and profound joy.  But it is always your choice.  What do you chose?

In the words of Albert Einstein:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

And whether you are right brained or left brained, or a happy blending of both, I recommend you check out this video:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html