The human brain is an incredibly valuable part of the body that has many functions, including problem-solving.  Its ability to model the world around it, then manipulate that model to generate totally new perspectives, is unparalleled. The body is unlikely to waste a resource that can help it succeed in its goal of survival.  When we sleep, there is an opportunity for the brain to answer questions, find paths towards what we desire, and  protect us from what we fear, and this is what it does.

During the day, we come across things we desire - either consciously or subconsciously.  Whether these are just thoughts, memories that cross our mind, or actual observations, it happens all the time.  A lost friend or loved one.  A beautiful person. Resources. Power. Control. Success. Freedom.  Even vengeance.  Most subtle desires go unnoticed in the conscious mind. But the subconscious mind occasionally takes note of them. In lieu of working on the problem in the present at the cost of attention, the brain saves the problem for later when we are asleep and there is ample time to process a solution.  This is also the case for things we fear - the other side of the dream coin.  As opposed to trying to find a path towards what we desire, fear wants us to find a path away from what might hurt us.  It wants to keep us safe.

The ancient language of the mind is symbols and imagery.  Many species of animals dream.   Modeling the world, using what we see in waking life with our eyes and ears, our mind takes past memories of familiar objects and activities to act as the sand in our dream-world-sandbox molding our surroundings to play in while we sleep.  For some people flying signifies freedom. For others, it symbolizes achievement and for others still, it represents taking a journey.  Different people have different meanings for their symbols, especially in the context of a dream.  There can be large overlaps in the lexicon of symbols among people who share the same culture, but much of each person’s symbolic language is personal.

The visual story a person experiences when they are having a dream is the narrative, or manipulation, of the model the brain has created for itself. It does this to get better at obtaining what it desires or to stay safe from what it fears.  The narrative plays itself out in order to test different scenarios and see what works so that it can subconsciously carry forward a solution into the dreamer’s waking life.   In short, the mind improves itself while sleeping based on a person’s goals.

Here’s an example of a typical dream.  A person is running around a restaurant trying to take everyone’s orders, but getting them all wrong.  Things are spilled and people start laughing.  What this dream typically represents is someone who started a job as a server in reality and is afraid of failing and the accompanying humiliation.  During the day, that very real fear crossed their mind but they were too busy to ruminate on it. So, the subconscious mind tucked it away for sleep time to come up with a plan on how to avoid that scenario in the future.

A more abstract dream might be someone who uses telepathy to move objects in a room.  They focus on it and get better over time until finally, they are able to move things all around with relative ease. The dream ability to move things telepathically might represent the desire for more control in this person’s waking life that currently feels chaotic.

Research has been done on people improving with manual tasks such as playing the guitar or solving a Rubik's Cube while sleeping if they try doing them right before bed, but little testing has been done on how much better people get at solving life’s puzzles during sleep - primarily because it’s hard to measure.  I look forward to more research and insight into the language of dreams and how to leverage our dream time to improve our lives in the years ahead.

If anyone has a specific dream or recurring dream time theme they would like to have interpreted, let me know.  I’ve shown a knack for it.

Most people are not nearly as happy as they could be.  They suffer from anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression, and many other types of feelings that diminish their quality of life.  When researchers measure someone’s wellbeing one of the questions they ask is “When you go to bed at night do you look forward to tomorrow?”  The number of people who answer "no" to that question is increasing.

All emotions have a positive evolutionary purpose but when they get “stuck” and are no longer serving the purpose they were evolved for, there is needless suffering.  In order to find your way out of chronic negative emotional states or situations, you’ll first need to understand what each emotion’s purpose is and what it’s telling you. Then you can begin making conscious decisions towards what one could argue is life’s greatest goal; happiness and wellbeing.  

Without a goal, your chances of arriving at an emotional ideal are incredibly slim. When options arise you will either pick the easier path, or the one that is familiar, not one leading you towards an improved result.  Once you broaden your emotional understanding a whole new range of options will seem just as familiar as you embark on a path that is likely to progress with a “change, pain, gain” sequence, also known as a “two steps backward to take three steps forward” approach - the continual pattern of personal life improvement.

Over the next several months I will post expositions on a wide variety of emotions to help people better understand why they feel the way they feel and to share how they can move forward in their pursuit of a better quality of life. I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned through many years of research, thought, trial, error, and observation.