Dreaming and YOUR experience

RD Laing thinks that we are alienated from our experience when we are awake as well as when we are asleep. Lang’s argument is that we are even more disconnected from our experience when sleeping than when we are awake. We decided to keep a dream journal next to our beds and as soon as we woke up in the morning, write anything down that we could remember about a dream we had that night. I have never had a very deep connection with my dreams and keeping a dream journal definitely helped me to realize that. Throughout the dream unit we discussed many ideas and theories about dreams to help us gain a better understanding. Even though I am not particularly in touch with dreams I think it is still my experience. A disconnect from your dreams as I have is probably not a good thing, a lack of connection to your dreams is a lack of connection to you unconscious mind or self.

An Archetype is a sort of "generic" model of a person or concept (Wikipedia). Archetypes are ideas that one has been conditioned to have as they grow up. These are subconscious thoughts and images that most people have no control over being that all humans (and maybe all living things with brains) use archetypes to identify and make sense of the other people and things around them, these are pure dream like thoughts that people use multiple times a day. This shows yet another example of how deeply connected dreams are with everyday life.

We also discussed the differences between imaginations and dreams. I said that you are generally in control over your imagination and you always know when you are imagining something, but dreams are tools of your subconscious and people normally don’t have much control over them. I also think you imagine things for the most part to amuse yourself and dreams are an effort by your subconscious to make sense of things while you sleep. I think the two are similar in the sense that they can both offer insight into your life, and anything can happen in both imaginations and in dreams.

We discussed lucid dreams, which we defined as being aware that you are dreaming. In reviewing my notes on dreams and experience I came to the conclusion that dreams are something that is happening to your unconscious mind. I attempted to have a Lucid dream by performing the Wave Induced Lucid Dreaming method or WILD. I set my alarm for 2:45am and kept an article about WILD induced lucid dreams next to my bed. The idea was to wake up in the middle of the night (or morning) and read about Lucid dreams with the hope of returning to sleep and having a Lucid dream. The first night I slept through the alarm and the second night I woke up, read the article, and went back to sleep, only to wake up at 7:00am with out having had a Lucid dream or any memory of even having a dream for that matter.

The dream unit of insight into daily life was enjoyable, and I am pretty sure if I continued with a dream journal and trying to become more in touch with my dreams I would be able to. As for Lucid dreams I think having one requires a great connection with your subconscious. Lucid dreams are probably a little above me at this point in my subconscious exploration.