It’s been my dream for years to host “Saturday Night Live”. Literally. I had this dream over and over, going back for decades.
I traveled to space, went back in time and turned into a superhero. I have been close friends with many celebrities. I created new memories with friends and family, some deceased. I committed terrible crimes. And I saved the day, over and over.
Our sleeping mind is a “private theater” where you are the director and usually the star, and there is no limit to the production budget. Yes, some of them are boring (most of mine are about work), but many are fun, incisive, and occasionally problem-solvers. That’s why you should consider turning a blank notebook into your first dream journal.
There is little scientific research on the benefits of dream journaling, but those who make it a practice find it helpful or insightful at best and interesting at the very least.
surely insane
The first potential benefit of the dream journal is that it can lead to a creative breakthrough. Your unconscious dreaming mind is by nature more inventive. Your dreams jump in time, leap in logic, accept contradictions, and sometimes make no sense at all to our more conventional conscious mind.
“Dreaming allows each of us to go insane quietly and safely every night of our lives” is as William Dement, founder of the Stanford University Sleep Research Center, once said.
There are countless stories of creative and innovative people who found inspiration in dreams and nightmares.
James Cameron had a vision of a “Terminator” robot crawling after a woman – a dream that sparked a massive movie franchise.
EB White came up with the character of “Stuart Little” in a dream. Just like Mary Shelley and her monster in “Frankenstein”. Computer scientist Larry Page dreamed of downloading the entire internet and cataloging just the links before doing it with the company he helped found, Google.
Paul McCartney got the inspiration to write “Let It Be” after his mother said that line to him in a dream. The melody of “Yesterday” also occurred to him in a dream. “I’m a big believer in dreams,” McCartney said in an interview with the New York Times Magazine. “I’m a great dream rememberer.”
Inception (The Origin)
In centuries past, people believed that dreams were messages from the dead that contained clues about what the living should do.
The Egyptian pharaohs believed that the gods sent us messages in our dreams; they called them “omina,” the origin of the word omen. And today’s major religions contain stories in their sacred texts in which dreams are important riddles whose meaning must be discovered.
A more current theory about why we dream is that it helps sort, organize and process all the stimuli of our waking life, like cleaning out cobwebs.
But sometimes there’s silk to be made from the webs, when the answer to a problem you can’t solve in your waking life is crafted into your most creative dream.
Dream solutions have the advantage of operating “without limits of time, logic, space, or other real-world rules,” wrote Allan Peterkin in a guided dream journal published by National Geographic. Peterkin is a professor of psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada.
There are also historical examples of problem solving in dreams. Elias Howe designed the modern sewing machine needle from a dream he had about cannibals waving spears at him, according to the New England Historical Society.
Albert Einstein even traced the roots of his theory of relativity to a dream he had as a teenager about traveling at the speed of light.
Sigmund Freud who wrote the first scholarly research on the interpretation of dreams, thought they mostly revealed secrets and embarrassing moments from our past.
But to his pupil turned rival, Carl Jung dreams explore universal archetypes and contain clues from our unconscious lives to help us find happiness and answers to problems.
Another theory is that dreams act as a dress rehearsal for real life, a way to safely test alternatives. This seems like a likely explanation for nightmares.
Scary dreams originate in the amygdala of your brain, where intense negative emotions like anger and fear reside, Peterkin explained. They’re useful, according to the researchers, because they can help train your brain to prepare for challenges and fears in your waking life.
By the way, the word nightmare in English (nightmare) comes from an image that sounds like a nightmare in itself: the Old English word for evil female spirits (mothers) believed to sit on his chest and suffocate him.
the royal road
Dreams are windows to your deepest self. By looking into a cracked, fun mirror of reality, you change your perspective. And as you write them down and consider what they mean, you travel the “royal road”, as Freud said, leading to knowledge of the unconscious of your mind.
Trying to understand your dreams can become an important part of understanding yourself, your relationships and your world, both inside and out.
Allan Peterkin, professor of psychiatry
the presenter Ellen DeGeneres came to the public after having a dream about a bird flying out of its cage and breaking free. Brad Pitt said in a recent interview with “GQ” that by studying his nightmares of being chased, arrested and stabbed, he was able to understand and deal with “deep scars” from childhood.
“No dream comes just to tell us what we already know. They invite us to go beyond what we know,” said Jeremy Taylor, author and past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
“I’ve been paying attention to my dreams lately,” wrote director and actress Sarah Polley in her new memoir, “Run Towards the Danger.”
“After 20 years in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, I am used to noticing them. They are smoke signals from the past, drawing my attention to scorched wreckage in a forest far from the mind, packed and buried under years of rubble, still smoldering. But lately I have also started to see dreams as guides, pointing the way forward.”
poor man’s opera
One more benefit of telling and recording your dreams is simply escaping. And who doesn’t need a vacation from life every now and then? In your dreams, you can visit the past or the future, go anywhere in the world or outside it, and fly there with or without a plane.
As Kahlil Gibran put it more poetically: “Allow us to give ourselves to sleep and perhaps the beautiful bride of dreams will lead our souls to a cleaner world than this.”
In English, the word dream (dream) comes from the Old English word for “joy, noise or music”. And there’s joy in recording the music or deciphering the noise.
“The bed is the poor man’s opera”, says an old Italian saying. And there is a new performance daily. Dreams can be “an amazing virtual reality model of the world,” Peterkin wrote, “updated with cool new content multiple times each night.”
In some of my wildest dreams, I married Nicole Kidman, I joined Laird Hamilton’s surf team, beat LL Cool J in a rap battle, and drove Speed Racer’s car, the Mach 5.
In still others, Sarah Silverman was my therapist, Ally Sheedy and I had an adventure while making an 1880s movie together, and I played Han Solo in a version of “Hamlet,” using a script made from cookies.
I went to high school in the 1800s with Hulk Hogan, at which time I attended the funeral of General Robert E. Lee. And I was Batman.
I can remember these dreams and hundreds of others because I’ve been writing them since high school. It is the simple act of recording dreams that keeps them from evaporating in daylight.
total recall
Of the many dream-themed films, my two favorites are Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” and Wim Wenders’ lesser-known 1991 film “Until the End of the World.” , with William Hurt, Sam Neill and Max von Sydow.
As a subplot in “Until”, the main characters find a way to videotape their dreams, and subsequently become narcissistically addicted to watching them (to the point of madness).
“You are now looking at the human soul, singing to yourself. To your own God!” says von Sydow’s character. As fun as that sounds, current technology hasn’t advanced us to the point of videotaping our dreams (yet). The closest thing available is to write them down.
You need little to get started. Find a dream journal app or designate a notebook to keep by your bedside. And the next time you remember a dream, even a hazy, half-remembered dream, write it down.
Even if it’s boring and doesn’t seem worth remembering, write it down. The more you get into the habit of writing them down, the better your memory will be.
I also leave a piece of paper in case I make some scribbled notes of keywords and elements in the middle of the night.
Even a single detail can bring back the memory of an entire dream. Telling someone about your dream right after you wake up can also help you keep it until you can write it down.
My dream journals have evolved over the years to include headlines for them, tracking themes, people and places, as well as noting how many were “good”, “bad” or “neutral/in-between”.
I do this to look for trends, but don’t push yourself too hard, especially when you’re starting out.
I also occasionally write a note at the end of the dream if I feel I have some insight into its meaning. I can instantly recognize that a dream of being lost in a city is actually losing a work file, for example.
Dream dictionaries compile mythology, psychology and cultural symbolism and can be interesting to look for recurring themes even if there is little scientific about them except in a collective unconscious Jungian way.
Just always remember to interpret a dream through your personal experience. For example, a dream dictionary might suggest that a dog in a dream means loyalty. But if you’re afraid of dogs, it’s more likely to represent something else you’re afraid of. Or if your mom has five dogs, the dog of your dreams could be in her shoes.
As the great myth expert Joseph Campbell said: “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”
*David G. Allan is the editorial director of CNN Travel, Style, Science and Wellness. This essay is part of a column called The Wisdom Project.
Source: CNN Brasil
