I have been thinking a lot about dreams lately. Dreaming is one of my favorite pastimes, because it is associated with my other favorite pastime, sleeping.
I have always struggled to remember my dreams.
I am so envious of people who have rich recollections of their dreams. I'm even slightly envious of people who have vivid nightmares, because at least that's something. I've tried all the recommended techniques for dream recall: keeping a dream journal, saying affirmations before falling asleep, all that tosh. Nothing really helps. Sometimes I wake up with the keen awareness that I've just emerged from an exceptionally detailed and extensive dream, but the minute I become aware of my waking reality, all the dream content just vanishes. It's terribly frustrating.
I would very much like to remember my dreams because I am just so fascinated by how they work. For example, how does it happen that things you never think about in your everyday conscious waking life show up in dreams? When I'm awake, I understand how this happens, because real life may introduce stimuli that breeds association. Seeing a dog on the street may remind you of the dog you owned when you were a kid. But there are no such external inputs when you're dreaming. So what makes you dream about the dog you owned when you were a kid?
I've also been fascinated by how we can hide things from ourselves in dreams. I had a dream once that was like a murder mystery of some kind, and in the end the culprit was revealed, and I was genuinely surprised. But if I was making up the story in my head, I should have known who I meant the culprit to be, ultimately. How did I fool myself with my own plot twist?
Anyway, not much of a post. I just think dreams are really interesting. I also firmly believe that they are supernatural in some way. I don't think they're just the product of the mind faffing about. I do think that when we dream we are tapping into some kind of universal consciousness stream. That might explain where some of the bizarre connections come from. But if that is the case then it's even more mysterious, because I can't imagine why the universal consciousness stream would have so much random junk in it.
I wish I could dream more. Dreams are very entertaining. The end.