Why are there dreams?

Dreaming is an amazing fact of human existence. Where else can we experience such rich emotions, such a variety of experience and such incredible journeys?

There are three things involved in dreams:

In the unconscious live the thoughts and feelings that we are so afraid of that we're not even aware of their existence. For instance children that have gone through extremely traumatic events such as rape frequently do not remember the occurrence although their behaviour can display signs of trauma, such as an inability to form close relationships. The mind protects us from destructive events using defence mechanisms such as repression, denial, dissociation and distortion, and consequently feelings of anxiety and annihilation are withheld from consciousness.

The subconscious mind is also largely unconscious in that we do not normally use it in our waking state but it can be accessed, and information gathered from it, in certain circumstances. An example of this is when hypnosis is used to remember a number plate that a witness could not consciously recall. On the same lines, information we didn't know we had absorbed comes out in our dreams very clearly. For instance picking up small cues from other people's body language that are not cnsciously recognised but are nonetheless noted in the mind.

The conscious mind is everything that we are aware of when we are awake and interacting in our environment; facts, figures, knowledge, language, self awareness, direct perception, opinions, personal identity - the I of our experience.
The way this relates to dreaming is that unconscious, subconscious and conscious material will be expressed in dreams. I believe this is an effort of the self to integrate into a state of health and wholeness in much the same way as our biological body does. In the dreaming state we are presented with information that if acknowledged and processed, can help us become more emotionally, mentally and spiritually healthy. That is why I think it is important to develop an understanding of dreams that includes all of these elements.

Happy Reading!