Guest Author - April Baker

What are dreams? It is a question that still has no definite answer. There are scientific explanations and mystical ones. No one can come to a consensus on the answer. They are, however, a very powerful and potent force within the human psyche.

There are five stages of sleep, dreams occurring in the fifth stage, REM sleep. It occurs about ninety minutes after we fall asleep. On average a dream will last anywhere from five to twenty minutes occurring for the most part in broken images, floating from once scenario to the next.

When we dream we enter a world of our own creation. It can be a place of peace or a nightmarish world. We use dreams to alleviate the pressures of everyday. In our dreams we loose our inhibitions. Things we could never normally do or say become a reality in our dream world. The brain uses all the knowledge we have absorbed to tell great stories, but that is not all it does.

Dreams are windows into the past, the present, and the future. They are memories of our past. People, places, and events that we have forgotten become real to us in our dreams. When we awaken from our dreams sometimes they can be so vivid we can smell the fresh baked apple pie from our grandmothers kitchen.

We use dreams to work out the problems we face during our everyday lives. You cannot very well tell your boss what you really think of him, but in a dream all bets are off. You can say and do what you like. They also help you solve problems. You can find answers that were there all along. Everything else just cluttered up your mind and got in the way of you seeing what was in front of your face.

They can also give us an insight into our future. Our mind is a complex thing. It has many layers and facets to it. We retain all of the information we take in. Our short-term memory may not recall it, but long-term memory does. It comes to life in our dreams. Based on what we know already know the mind can make a leap in our dreams that we wouldn’t make in everyday life. We can interpret what we see in our dreams and make an educated guess as to what it means.

Dreams are a complex subject, but a fascinating one. We may never understand them, but we will always keep trying to. They give us knowledge about ourselves and they help us to understand and accept the things around us. They entertain us and sometimes inspire fear within us, but we always take something away from them.

They are our souls speaking to us. All we have to do is listen and learn.