Welcome to the Order of the Sacred Star! This Pagan/Wiccan group, based in Winnipeg, Canada, is committed to teaching the Craft to all those who wish to learn. Our goal is to provide a complete and fulfulling learning experience. Our public classes are offered through the Winnipeg Pagan Teaching Circle.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Exploring the Source and Significance of Dreams

Most people in modern society take little notice of a random bit of half-remembered dream, whether it be a good dream, full of hope and happiness, or a nightmare, full of terror. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the scientific world continues to explore dreams in depth. There are numerous laboratories conducting a multitude of tests focusing on dreams and dreaming, all around the world.

On a more metaphysical level, dreams and their symbols have been important to most cultures around the world for many centuries. Thought to convey messages or even predict events, historically, dreams were rarely dismissed.

The Source of Dreams

Before, an ability to approach dreams from a spiritual point of view, it is important to understand where they come from, and why they come at all. Determining where they come from is a simple process of elimination.

The mind can be roughly divided into three parts: the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the superconscious mind. The conscious mind, the part of the mind that is responsible for everyday activities, is at rest while dreaming, and so not likely the source of dreams. The subconscious mind, the instinctual part, is generally passive, and not really capable of logic or reason. It seems unlikely that the subconscious mind could possibly be responsible for the complexity of a dream, giving that its responsibility is contrary to the nature of dreams.

That leaves the superconscious mind, also called the higher or spiritual self. Since neither the conscious or subconscious mind can logically be thought to be the source of dreams, it must be the superconscious mind that is responsible. The higher self does nothing randomly. This means that dreams must carry some importance to the higher self, and so warrants some attention.

The Importance of Dreams

The question of whether or not dreams are important at all has long since been answered on a scientific level; dreaming is vital to the sanity of the conscious mind. Scientific research has shown that when subjects have their dreams continually interrupted, they develop great amounts of emotional stress. In addition, science has also revealed that each person dreams, on average, seven times each night, for up to forty-five minutes at a time. Some argue that the sheer amount of time dedicated to dreaming must give dreams some significance.

When the source of dreams, some believe that the higher self, is taken into consideration, the importance of dreams becomes even more evident. For the majority of the population, some theorize that dreams are the only way the higher self has to really communicate with the conscious mind. Therefore, the higher self must spend each and every night attempting to get across any message that it deems necessary.

The higher self expends a great deal of time and effort into creating a dream to transmit a certain message. In addition, science has proven that they conscious mind cannot function without an appropriate amount of dreaming, which occurs every night, and several times each night. Taking all this into consideration, dreams are probably not random, and likely far more important than most people realize, on both a scientific and an esoteric level.

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