Dreams and their significance

Have you ever wondered what your dreams actually mean? Those uncanny, superficial, weird, spooky, surreal, godly ideas that come to your mind when you think that you have shut your mind completely? Well, dreams are a gateway to your subconscious mind. It is probably the solution to your problems, something that you have been anticipating, something that might happen in your future and something that your subconscious wants to tell you.

Even the stupidest dreams have some meaning attached to it. However, it is hard to write down the real stimuli for a dream. Noises from your background, any physical body pressure, something that you have been thinking for so long, things that your mind responds to while you are asleep, external circumstances and a lot can make its way through your dream, yet the most thoughtful of all will come to you in your deepest sleep, i.e 2 A.M. – 6 A.M.

As omens or insights, as alarms or a memory, for years people have been interpreting their dreams in different way, with whatever comforts them, but now we have science. Researchers have spent time in comprehending, studying, understanding them, for all dreams don’t really say the same story. It becomes fascinating and complicated when people from diff a rent cultural background, societies, past, present, living standards, problems, mental illness report same dreams.

Here’s a list of common dreams and their interpretation

1. Being chased

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This is one of the most common dreams ever. It signifies that you’re threatened in real life. It also means that you’re running away from it from fear. These problems vary from anything that is external and, of course, the internal battles of your mind.

2. Falling

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That feeling of falling from a skyscraper or a cliff has baffled almost everyone has two meanings. It could either relate to your anxiety that you have for something which is beyond the control or a sense of failure.

3. Experiencing nudity

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Sometimes there are dreams when you see that you are unable to cover yourself up in public places. This relates your stress with the emotional or psychological vulnerability. The act of being exposed to someone you don’t trust. It also says that you are evidently trying to hide something.

4. Water

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It is a mirror of your subconscious mind. The quality of water often describes the situation of your emotions. Crystal clear, clean, adulterated, calm mostly provides strong insights about the state of your feelings.

5. Walking, but unable to move

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It can likewise be a piece of the pursuing dream. You’re running or trying to run, yet either your legs won’t move or you just aren’t going any place – as though you are on a treadmill. According to researchers, this fantasy implies, you have excess on your plate. You’re attempting to do too many things too soon and can’t make up for the lost time.

6. Losing all your teeth

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Many people have this dream when they feel that they are chewing something in their mouth and when they spit out to see it, they find that it is their teeth. According to some researchers, teeth are widely associated with our power, wisdom and ability to communicate. Therefore, such dreams mostly come when you are failing to communicate your true feelings.

7. Exams

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Such dreams relate to when in life, you think that you are being tested or judged. Also, people have often mentioned that they have such dreams where they do not reach on time or lose their ability to write, or forget to bring their pen. Well, it only means that you are nervous and dubious about your performance on that platform.

8. Vehicles

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Vehicles in our life reflect what road / way we feel our life is taking, and the amount of control we think we have over the way forward of us. A car, an aeroplane, ship or train would interpret your knowledge of the subject and how much you will be able to control it.

9. Paralysis

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Another common form of a dream which engulfs many people every night is not really a dream per se. The Human body undergoes a form of minute paralysis during sleep, which prevents them from taking any action on what is happening in their dream. Their subconscious mind remains still. It can often be related to the fact that that individual feel the loss of control.

10. Death

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Watching your loved ones die in your dream is one of the most common and dreaded dreams of all. In spite of the fact that death is frequently seen as a negative aspect, it’s identified with emotional change happening for the one who is dreaming- so as to make space for something new.

11. Flying

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It is mostly the reverse of the falling dream. It indicates that your life is going in the right direction and therefore you think you are flying, above others and mostly feel a sense of superiority in a good way.

12. Demons / Devils

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Are you facing any repressed emotions? Has someone intimidated you in ways you could not take? You may secretly want to change your behaviour for certain things in life.

13. Hair

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Losing hair in real life is far more different than what it means in your dreams. Hair maintains strong ties with sexuality. Plentiful hair may symbolize virility while losing hair in a dream demonstrates loss of interest in libido.

14. Killing

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A terrifying dream that entails a murder by you tells a lot about your desire to kill a part of yourself, more so, to alter your personality in a way.

15. Trapped in a cage / box

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This is a very common dream that reflects your inability to free yourself from a bad decision, choice or situation.

16. Snakes

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Snakes are a typical dream image.  They are known for shedding their skin ( transformation) and healing from ancient times. Some snakes also represent feeling of shame, guilt, punishment and a sinful act.

They promised that dreams can come true – but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.

Source: storypick.com

What happens to your brain when you fall in love

These points and others in the same vein were detailed in a recent New York Times opinion piece called “The Brain on Love” by writer-poet Diane Ackerman. We found it an empathic article, one that celebrates human bonding from the first moment a newborn baby imprints on its mother. Bonding takes place via complex brain mechanisms that follow us throughout our lives.

The human brain is an exquisitely sensitive instrument. It registers the slightest nuance of any experience you have ever had. This is no more evident than in love. Imagine someone whispering, “I love you.” In romantic terms these are desirable words – probably the most desirable any of us will ever hear.

The brain responds to ‘I love you” with an orchestration of positive reactions. People who are in love feel less stressed; their blood pressure goes down. When a couple who enjoys a long-term loving marriage hold hands, even their response to physical pain is strengthened.

The sense of oneness that characterizes a strong mother-child relationship morphs over time. It persists among happily married adults and gives such pleasure, as well as a sense of security, that our brains seek “at-one-ness” the way an addict seeks cocaine. Ackerman is quick to point out that love isn’t exactly the same as cocaine use, but her argument involves the same receptors for morphine-like chemicals in the brain as well as an impressive description of hormonal responses and other neurological particulars.

We have reached such a subtle state of brain research that the materialist fallacy gets trampled by thousands of brain scans “proving” that the brain registers love in so many ways. But the notion that the brain’s pleasure centers are the source of loving feelings isn’t necessarily true.

These centers are used to register and experience love. This is different from saying they generate love on their own. Ackerman is careful to point out that the brain’s pain centers are also vulnerable when we fall in love; the pain of being rejected triggers the same brain response as actual physical pain. Here is precisely where the argument for the brain in love – or on love – begins to fall apart.

If you stimulate a mouse’s brain with a pleasurable experience, such as giving it food, the mouse will return again and again to get more stimuli. This is a predictable, mechanical reaction. The same isn’t remotely true for humans. Put a tempting bowl of pasta in front of a person, and it is entirely unpredictable what the response will be. The person may say such things as “I don’t like pasta,” I’m on a diet,” “I don’t like how this dish is made,” or give no reason at all for pushing the plate away.

We are perverse, if viewed as higher mammals. We make choices that have nothing to do with how the brain is programmed. We make decisions that are new, creative, surprising, and utterly unconditioned.

Unfortunately for materialism, machines follow preset instructions; the brain doesn’t. Its reactions are part of a feedback loop that is ultimately controlled by the mind.

Let’s say you are well loved but it’s 1942, you are French, and the wartime resistance has asked you to go underground to fight the Nazis. Your decision will be based on all kinds of factors: conscience, patriotism, risk, danger, politics, history, and more. The fact that you were imprinted by a loving mother enters the equation, but so what? Many a resistance fighter left behind a loving wife and children.

Nothing could be further from a mouse seeking to increase its stimulated pleasure centers, or even balancing pleasure centers with pain centers. To reduce the choices we make in life to brain functions disregards the complexity of human existence, which is mental in nature.

Materialism is insulting to our spirit, and when new findings about the brain emerge, as they do every day, to explain why you do what you do, feel what you feel, and want what you want, please take it all with a huge grain of salt. For a lover of music, it’s not necessary to know the inner workings of a grand piano; far better to study Mozart and the meaning of beauty.

The bottom line is that our brains allow us to register and express feelings like love and benevolence through electrochemical activation of specific brain regions and neurochemicals. But, we are also imbued with the ability to choose how we wish to deal with those feelings. Mindfully making choices transcends the simple stimulus-response automations of our neural networks and truly defines who we are.

Content Courtesy: thespiritscience.net