The Meaning of Dreams

Image from world-of-lucid-dreaming.com

I seldom remember a dream. But last night it was a vivid dream that has recurred every now then. It occurred very late in my sleep and when I woke up it was 8AM-time to wake up, update my blogs and read my e-mails and the morning news. I am normally awake at around 7:00 to 7:30AM, but this time I oversleeped. What was my dream that inspired me to search for its meaning. Here's it is as far as I can remember.

I was a teenager then and we lived in a big antique mansion at the outskirts of my hometown in a 3rd class municipality in Iloilo, Philippines( the place where I grow up and went to high school). The mansion is a two-story house with a basement, 8 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms,and a banquet room (formal dining room). The decor were all antiques that my grandparents(my grandfather was a Spanish soldier and my grandmother was a Filipina) had collected during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. There was a grand piano in the living room with huge crystal chandelier that was imported from Spain. There is an underground passage in the basement that leads to the the Conference Hall. The house had a 5 acres of land with several outbuildings and a conference hall at the back, where my family held gatherings and parties for the community. One day, we had a party for the community and my parents had invited about 300 guests. The mansion has a formal dining room that could accommodate around 24 guests in a sit down dinner, but since the number of guests will not fit inside the mansion, the party was held in the conference hall at the back of the property. I was in the main house during this party and was awakened when one of the guest informed us that the conference hall was burning and told us to call the fire department. That's it, and I woke up (nothing sexy in this dream, although I have dreamt of many sexy things in the past). But my recurrent dream is this mansion that my parents and grandparents had resided and where I grew up. So what is the meaning of this dream? You may look it up at www.meaningofdreams.org.
The following is an excerpt from the above website in how to understand our dreams.

"Dreaming and sleeping are not mutually exclusive, so to embark on the journey of understanding why you dream and dream interpretation you must also explore the science or phenomena of sleep.

As human beings we live our lives in cycles, with around two thirds of our day filled with waking activity and one third of our day spent in a state of rest. We use sleep to cast aside our daily struggles, both mental and physical, and while our internal systems go about repairing and restoring our muscles and soothing our aches and pains, our brain takes us to imaginary landscapes, or dreams capes, to escape the mental stresses of day to day life. With proper sleep we awake feeling revitalized and rejuvenated.

Everyone needs sleep and dreams, even if they're not always remembered, to function properly and successfully carry out daily tasks. When we do not sleep properly we become physically rundown and mentally incapable of coping with situations and problems favorably, lacking the means to flourish as a Human Being. If you go without sleep, depriving yourself of dreams, it soon becomes apparent that sleeping and dreaming are an essential part of being human.

There have been scientific studies of sleep deprivation that suggest your brain will increase your level of dreaming to compensate for the dreams you have missed by skipping sleep. You may have noticed this yourself when, during periods of stress and heavy workloads, you have stayed up too late and woken up too early for extended periods and your body has taken over and made you sleep longer at the weekend and you wake up having had a tremendous amount of vivid dreams - almost as if your brain was filled to bursting with dreams. In fact, if you go for long enough without sleep you may notice your subconscious leaking dream-like thoughts into your waking life in the form of what one might call hallucinations, seeing things and hearing voices that will often make you feel paranoid, as if you are losing your mind. But, unlike real paranoid illnesses, all the symptoms will magically disappear after a prolonged period of restful sleep that compensates for the dreaming deficit.

It is widely believed that dreams are the mind's way of sorting through our waking thoughts, dealing with some of the harder to face issues in an abstract way that is less stressful and time-consuming than facing them while we are awake. After all, we would never get anything done if we spent all day worrying about our thoughts, relationships and childhood traumas. With this in mind, it is easy to see why we can breakdown mentally and physically without sleeping and dreaming".

So, how about you? Do you remember your dreams? Do you have recurring dreams? Could recurring dreams be linked to past lives? Watch out for my next posting on past lives and reincarnation.

Source: meaningofdreams.org