Tuesday, November 10, 2009

What do Dreams do?

(WQ) Dreams allow the mind to decom-press, to unwind, to resist nothing. It is for this reason that premonitions and intuitions may break through. Dreams are met with most frequently in Buddhist texts as a means of unscrambling symbols. Our cultural point of view has a great deal to do with the Greek view, which itself was heavily influenced by ancient Indian thinking on the subject.

Whether it's a vague vision or full REM surround sound technicolor dreaming, what we remember must have as much to do with the significance we place on what we experience. As attention goes, energy flows. This also works in reverse: to get energy to flow to one's meditation practice or insight or object of concentration...give it more attention. And remember not to neglect those eight hours or more of laying in silence with eyes closed and the lights off. It's called actual "sleep."

A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain
New York Times (Health/Mind)
What if the primary purpose of dreaming isn’t psychological at all? In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard, argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, when most dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking. More>>