Importance of Dreams

Are Dreams Important?

You finally fulfilled your dream of going to the Bahamas, taking your time watching the sea and reading your favorite paperback while sipping piña colada. You turn to the next chapter of the book you are reading but you notice that dark clouds are on their way to ruining a good day at the beach. Suddenly, the rain poured and you find yourself running as fast as you can. Fortunately or unfortunately, this was all just a dream and you woke up just in time.

Dreams make sleeping time exciting especially when people get to fulfill their innermost wishes through their dreams. However, dreams are sometimes frightening especially when they become violent and are no longer worth dreaming about.

Again, research has shown that dreams rarely portray the daily happenings in a person's life. Scientists believe that dreams are a product of brain chemicals that can switch on dreams during the REM sleep or rapid eye movement stage. Dreams can also be switched off by the proper brain chemicals. If this is true then can dreams be just an insignificant series of scattered thoughts and images?

Dreams are as old as history with the earliest reported dream dating back to 1800 BC. People's account of their dreams has been documented in numerous medium and most notably in books like the Old Testament, showing how important they are.

Random Sleeping Tip

Cigarette contains nicotine as a major chemical present in it and is a stimulant. If you are smoking about a pack per day then you must know that you are having high levels of nicotine in your blood and that just keeps you highly active throughout the day and at the end of the day you might not feel tired enough to sleep and this just disrupts the sleeping patterns excessively. Not sleeping at appropriate times makes you dull the next day and you smoke more to compensate it. Just try to engage into some exercise activity so that you can sleep well during the nighttime.

Religions like Christianity consider dreams as significant because they look at dreams as manifestations of God's revelations. However the heads of Christianity acknowledge the fact that God does not reveal himself in dreams so Christians were to take the stand that dreams do not show God's messages and are best left ignored.

However, the writings of psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are beginning to catch the interest of most people who have started to become interested in dreams.

Man's concept of dream has turned full circle, from the time when dreams were believed to be special messages from a higher being to the time when dreams were considered insignificant and were treated as nothing but images. Today, a growing awareness of the works of psychologists are making people more interested in dreams and what they have to offer mankind.

Jung's work espouses the belief that the unconscious self holds information that is revealed only to the person through dreams. Jung believed that dreams make up for the things or actions that cannot be done by the conscious self. Freud's theory is focused on the function of dreams in connection with a person's mechanical functions.

Dreams are sometimes used to cure physiological and psychological illnesses. Psychiatrists make use of a person's dreams to study his fears and his anxieties. There are studies which show that dreams are nothing but a normal part of sleeping, especially during REM sleep. However, there are new schools of thought suggesting that dreams do occur even outside of the non-REM sleep.

As discussed before, sleep is divided into five stages, the first being the lightest stage where a person becomes drowsy. The fifth stage is called the REM stage or the so-called dreaming stage because most dreams occur during this period. However, latest findings will show that REM sleep is not exactly the same with dreaming. So are dreams important? Most researchers argue that dreams are not important because most dreams are easily forgotten. People who can even remember their dreams are not better off than those who cannot remember their dreams.

While researchers agree that dreams are not really that important, they are one in saying that dreams are not meaningless. Dreams are images and a reflection of the contents of a person's mind. And while dreams were considered scientifically meaningless, people have developed a sense for their dreams.

Most people get threatened by their dreams but scientists advise that if people cannot find a good use or a good meaning to their dreams, then they should forget their dreams. If your dreams bring out negative emotions in you then do not try to recall them but instead forget them as they are useless.

Only harness your dreams when they can make positive changes in your lives and if they can encourage you to do great things and become more productive. The rule is that if your dreams encourage intellectual or artistic stimulation keep them. Otherwise, forget them.

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