Why Do You Dream the Dreams You Dream?

Do you catch yourself dreaming during your waking hours? What are those dreams? Where do they come from? Why do you dream?

photo credit: Oliver Lein, unsplash.com

Recent research indicates that your sleeping dreams are generated from your brain stem. Perhaps this is a maintenance function that allows you to process things that have been clogging up your higher thinking processes. What we do know is that people often wake up with answers to questions that plagued them the night before or with insight that escaped them after days of attempts at rational thought.

The dreams I have during quiet moments of wakefulness never seem to be like that. If they are truly dreams, then they are projections of reality — a wish, a hope, a . . . well, a dream. These thoughts are fairly well-formed. They have some degree of substance. And almost always, they bear a price. The concoctions of the mind that come easily and cheaply don’t seem to rise to the status of true dreams.

We can become lost in these dreams. Or we can experience these thought-filled moments with an expectation of finding ourselves and our place on a path. That moment of discovery is the seed of vision. As I wrote in an earlier post, I believe that vision is simply a dream with a pathway to make it real.

Not all dreams should result in vision. Let’s face it some dreams are just dreams. In fact, some are pipe dreams — wishes that are almost impossible or impractical to achieve.

But what about those dreams that call to you? Why do they keep coming back?

I wonder what fuels my waking dreams and I’m an eager witness to the dreams that edge their way towards vision. I’d love to hear yours someday. And I am really interested in how you invest in those dreams to produce vision.