I Pay Attention To My Dreams

I don't always understand them and wish I did. Last night I dreamt I saw someone drawing an eye without picking up the pen, it was drawn in one fluid motion. It just seemed to appear in the air, it had thick black lines and you couldn't see who was doing it. There was more going on, but I can't remember what it was. I'd appreciate any insight you may have.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

Don't try to "understand" them.

That's the best "insight".

I used to have occasional, physically dangerous nightmares I realised seemed related to stress and related problems that no longer exist. I have also had occasional,alarming but actually harmless, hynagogic hallucinations - the experiences probably responsible for the more common "ghost" themes.

Otherwise my dreams are harmless but sometimes cite real people in very surreal versions of real places or totally invented places.

Our brains are really very busy with its own Important Things when it has sent us to sleep so we are not distracting it. Dreams are now thought an effect of the brain sorting and re-archiving our memories; but are all fleeting, usually have little or no significance or "meaning"; and forgetten very rapidly on waking - unless we consciously try to remember them.

Bertie · 46-50, F

@ArishMell Yes, apparently our brains don't sleep when the rest of our body does?! Thank you.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@Bertie Well, no, they can't go to sleep completely.

The brain is overseeing keeping the rest of our body operating, but is also carrying out its own housekeeping and maintenance.

It closes our main three senses - hearing, touch and sight - down to watch-keeping alarm levels, so we ignore normal stimuli but a loud noise or unexpected contact will still wake us. Our sight is still "on" - we close our eyes but our eye-lids are just translucent enough for a switched-on lamp or strong daylight to wake us. I don't know if our sense of smell will still register a strong odour, such as smoke, though we might notice that by throat irritation.

The sense of touch has an important sleeping role. It detects when we have been lying still for too long and triggers our turning over, so we are not applying pressure to any area of the body or keeping muscles static for too long at a time. A time-lapse video of someone sleeping normally is startling in showing just how many times we move about and roll over.

You see similar behaviour in a pet cat or dog - and a sleeping cat especially noticeably moves its ears about, making me think the animal is still monitoring its surroundings. (We can't waggle our outer ears.)

The brain is also monitoring things like bladder capacity via the organ's nerves - waking us with the right warning sensations when necessary!

We know the imagination and memory bits get a bit wild and busy at times - creating dreams - but what is curious is that sometimes they seem to solve real problems or have little bursts of creativity like composing fragments of music. Perhaps these are a special sort of dream inspired by us having been concentrating on the subject.