Dreams

As you can see by the list in the feature image, one of my favorite things in life is dream sleep. This being the case, I thought that a blog post about dreams might be fun to write. Come along with me as we look at the many varied aspects of dreaming. See if you can relate to anything that comes up during the discussion.

Although I didn’t want to get bogged down in the technicalities of dreams within this blog post, I think I have added more than I think you, as a reader, might be interested in, so skip the italicized parts if desired; I don’t think you will miss much by doing so. I did include the technical bits as an aid for myself, while pondering how I wanted to present this topic.

First off, let’s define “dream,” “dreams,” and “dreaming,” in the manner of which is being discussed here. WordWeb defines all three as: “A series of mental images and emotions occurring during sleep.” Yep, that’s what we are talking about here, not imaginative thoughts and desires while awake.

Dreams occur during what is called REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, or what is often called “dream sleep.”

The Bing AI defines REM sleep as a unique and important stage of the sleep cycle characterized by several distinct features:

1. Rapid Eye Movements: As the name suggests, during REM sleep, your eyes move rapidly in various directions. This is one of the most noticeable signs of this sleep stage.
2. Dreaming: REM sleep is the stage where most vivid dreaming occurs. Your brain is highly active, almost as if you were awake, which is why dreams can feel so real.
3. Muscle Atonia: During REM sleep, your body experiences temporary paralysis of most voluntary muscles. This prevents you from acting out your dreams, which could be potentially dangerous.
4. Brain Activity: The brain’s activity during REM sleep is similar to its activity when you’re awake. This stage is crucial for cognitive functions such as memory consolidation, learning, and emotional regulation.
5. Sleep Cycles: REM sleep occurs in cycles throughout the night, typically starting about 90 minutes after you fall asleep. Each REM period gets longer as the night progresses, with the final REM stage lasting up to an hour.

REM sleep is essential for overall health and well-being. It plays a critical role in processing emotions, solidifying memories, and maintaining cognitive functions.

Not so long ago, I watched a Star Trek: TNG two-part episode called Birthright (S6.E16 & E17), where Data takes his first steps into the world of dreams. During the show it was suggested that humans might go crazy and die if they go too long without REM sleep. As such, I asked the Bing AI if this was true.

The Bing AI responded with:

While it’s an exaggeration to say that humans would “go crazy and die” without REM sleep and dreaming, there are significant negative effects associated with the lack of REM sleep:

1. Cognitive Impairment: REM sleep is crucial for cognitive functions such as memory, learning, and problem-solving. Without it, people can experience difficulties with concentration, memory retention, and decision-making.
2. Emotional Instability: REM sleep helps regulate emotions. Lack of REM sleep can lead to increased irritability, anxiety, and mood swings.
3. Physical Health Issues: Chronic sleep deprivation, including insufficient REM sleep, can contribute to various health problems such as weakened immune function, increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic issues.
4. Hallucinations and Psychosis: Severe and prolonged sleep deprivation can lead to hallucinations and symptoms of psychosis. However, this typically requires an extended period without sleep, not just the absence of REM sleep.
5. Overall Well-being: REM sleep is part of the sleep cycle that contributes to overall restorative processes in the body. Missing out on this can affect overall well-being and quality of life.

While the body can adapt to some extent, chronic deprivation of REM sleep is detrimental to both mental and physical health. It’s essential to maintain a healthy sleep cycle to ensure all stages of sleep, including REM, are adequately experienced.

As a side note, one of the many health issues that accompanies Parkinson’s disease is having REM sleep disorders, so my wife, Denise, is required to take medication to help alleviate this problem. It seems to be working, which both her and I are grateful for. If you get a chance, ask Denise to describe her nighttime issues due to her Parkinson’s disease for an eye opener into her chaotic nighttime life. Ask her about punching and kicking out in her sleep and other such wonderful things.

An important question to ask at this point, and one that has a different answer depending on who you ask, is why do we dream? As is typical for me, I asked the Bing AI.

The Bing AI replied: Dreams are a fascinating and complex aspect of human experience, and while there’s still much we don’t fully understand, several theories offer insights into why we dream.

1. Memory Consolidation: One prominent theory suggests that dreaming helps consolidate and process memories from the day. This means that dreams might help us sort through and store important information while discarding what’s unnecessary.
2. Emotional Processing: Dreams may also play a role in processing emotions. By engaging with and rehearsing feelings in different imagined contexts, our brains might be managing and regulating our emotions.
3. Problem-Solving and Creativity: Some researchers believe that dreams facilitate creative thinking and problem-solving. Without the constraints of logical thinking, our minds can explore new ideas and solutions.
4. Fight-or-Flight Training: The amygdala, a part of the brain associated with survival instincts, is highly active during dreaming. This has led to the theory that dreams might help prepare us for real-life threats by simulating fight-or-flight scenarios.
5. Mental Housekeeping: Another theory posits that dreaming is a way for the brain to perform “mental housekeeping,” clearing away partial, erroneous, or unnecessary information.

Despite these theories, the exact purpose of dreams remains a topic of ongoing research and debate.

I concur, for the most part with all five theories mentioned above, with the exception of #4, but only because I don’t recall ever having dreams that would fit in that category. Having said that, I know that I don’t remember all, or even most my dreams, but I think I remember enough that I would say that I don’t have this type. My experience with dreams in general is that I remember many of them when I wake up, but they dissipate quite rapidly, and unless I make notes first thing upon waking, they drift away and cannot be recalled, much like what I ate for breakfast is gone from my memory by lunch. 😊

As a side note, after reading a preview of this blog post, Denise said that she related well to #4, the Fight-or-Flight Training dreams. She mentioned that she has had many of these dreams and has even discussed them with her counselor at different times in her life. She explained much about this to me, and it made so much sense, so obviously, just because I have not experienced something, doesn’t mean nobody has. A good reminder to me, for sure.

As we all know, there are many types of dreams. Again, I asked the Bing AI to list several types of dreams and he, she, it provided the list below.

1. Standard Dreams: These are the most common and occur during REM sleep. They can be influenced by daily experiences and emotions.
2. Lucid Dreams: In these dreams, the dreamer is aware they are dreaming and can sometimes control the dream’s content.
3. Nightmares: Disturbing dreams that can cause fear or anxiety. They often occur due to stress, trauma, or certain medications.
4. Night Terrors: More common in children, these involve intense fear and confusion upon waking, often without remembering the dream.
5. Recurring Dreams: Dreams that repeat themselves with little variation in story or theme.
6. Vivid Dreams: Extremely clear and detailed dreams that feel very real.
7. Prophetic Dreams: Dreams that some believe predict future events, though there’s no scientific evidence to support this.
8. False Awakening Dreams: Dreams where the dreamer believes they have woken up, only to realize they are still dreaming.

Each type of dream can offer different insights into our subconscious mind and emotional state.

Now that the foundation has been laid, I would like to talk about Standard Dreams, Lucid Dreams, just briefly, and Recurring Dreams.

I consider standard dreams to be the type that one typically has no memory of upon waking, or if it is remembered, does not fit in another category such as recurring. I think that these types of dreams are the ones that present themselves while our brain works to solve a problem, or to sort and consolidate memories, much like a computer optimizes a hard drive. I had to set up my computer to perform this optimization procedure and it does so every Wednesday night while I sleep. The brain, being a much better computer, came with this process already established and it is done every night while I sleep.

As luck would have it, I had a great dream last night that fit hand in hand with a one-off standard type of dream, while working through a problem. As a benefit, I found the dream was easy to interpret or decipher. Here is what I penned/recorded this morning upon waking. Yes, I cleaned up my notes and added a bit more detail as I recalled thoughts and feelings.

I just woke up from a dream that seems to having been running for a good stretch of time during the night. I glance at the bedside clock and see that it is 5:18 am. The dream is fresh in my mind, and I recall that it has been a most enjoyable one, as a good movie might be. I grab my phone and make a recording of my thoughts. In the dream, it is clear to me that I’m out at my wife’s cousin Rick’s farm and Rick wants to build a 185-meter-long wind block with telephone poles and heavy lumber. For us Imperial measurement lovers, that’s a fraction under 607 feet. That is about the height of the Seattle Space Needle (604’) or the Washington Monument (555’). Due to my construction background, I presume, that Rick wants me to lead the project. I, of course, want to create a plan in my CAD program and get it all properly laid out before I begin construction. I keep trying to talk to Rick about some of the ideas I have about the build and about getting materials ordered and ready on hand. He’s giving me money to start buying the things I need, big handfuls of cash and even a large roll of bills. For some reason the scene has changed, and we are in a grocery store where he has given me the cash and I am looking for a metal tin of sorts to store it in. Many of the tins I find are rusty with holes, but I think I eventually find one. As the dream continues, I find that we are back on the farm, and we have started construction. One of Denise’s uncles, Uncle Gordon, wants to do things willy-nilly and he doesn’t even want to use a plumb line to help keep the poles straight-up level. I am getting a bit upset by his attitude because I want everyone to do a good job, so the results will be something we can be proud of.

Once I woke up and transcribed my recording, I realized that this dream was saying quite a lot and pulling from many of my past experiences and memories. At first, I realized that although I had started writing this blog post a couple of days prior I was struggling with the content. As I indicated earlier, I didn’t want too many technical details that might bore my readers. I wanted the blog post to be entertaining to some degree, and I wanted it to be meaningful. At this point, I realized that the wind block wall was/is this blog post. I want the blog post constructed well, something I can be proud of. At this early stage I was questioning whether I could pull it off, so my dream sleep was busy trying to sort out the details, or to make sense of it all. The planning and the CAD portion of the dream makes sense, since this is my background and one way in which I always made sense of building construction. If this were the only connection, it would be enough to explain the dream, but there are other factors that make it more than interesting and solidify that the dream was about the blog post, or at least I believe so.

Take note that I have a couple of experiences with building this type of wind break structure. The first was when I worked on a dairy farm in my early twenties. At one point we were building an above-ground silage pit. It consisted of two walls, probably 100 feel long, 40 or more feet wide, and 12 or 14 feet high, constructed with telephone poles and heavy lumber. Each wall is much like a wind break.

Silage Pit – Modeled & Rendered by Don Cheke (The tractor is a model from Trimble’s 3D Warehouse)

At that time, we had a Chinese agricultural exchange student staying with us, and as a result he was helping with the silage pit build. He was quite amusing, and he kept trying to get us to use a plumb line to align the poles, while we used levels to do the job. It was quite funny because he was so fixated on using a that simple machine, the plumb line. Note the connection in the dream. Interesting, isn’t it! You will probably think I am making this up, but I believe the Chinese fellow’s name was Moo Beijing (spelling?) or something like that. We called him Mr. Moo and although I didn’t find him particularly enduring, I did find this whole name business amusing, since we were on a dairy farm. Thinks cows! Moo…. 😊

The second experience was when I had my home improvement business and was contracted to build a wind block on a nearby acreage. It was more like a huge fence, but it served the same purpose. I constructed the fence without issue, and the customer was pleased.

Just for interest’s sake, I almost had a third experience with a similar type of structure, but it would have been so much more. During the same home improvement business time period, another more distant relative (a brother of my Uncle Ron’s wife) had asked if I might be interested in building a type of pole barn. Think opened-air barn with telephone poles spaced around the outer walls with a roof on top. It would have been used to store hay bales and/or farming equipment. It never came to pass and I’m kind of glad about that because this project would have been way outside of my current skill level. But had it come to be, I suspect I would have researched and made sure that I did it right and proceeded with much trepidation.

Pole Barn – Modeled & Rendered by Don Cheke (I left the gable end cap off, so you could see the roof trusses)

It’s interesting to note too that the little bit about the grocery store and the money comes from a time when I was remodeling a house for my uncle Ron. Uncle Ron also owned a grocery store in a small town near Saskatoon and was quite successful in his own way. Anyway, one day while I was renovating this house, and he was over for a visit, I said that I needed some more money for some additional building supplies. I expected I would have to wait for him to get some, or write a cheque, but no, he pulled his wallet out and handed me $10,000, all $1000 bills. I just couldn’t believe how much money he travelled around with. Later in life, as I learned more about recovery and the baggage we all have, I realized that Ron carried around that much cash due to his desire to look and be successful. Ron grew up in poverty, with an abusive lazy father, and a mentally unstable mother, who had IOUs all around town (the days of credit, if you recall). Ron had moved away from home and became very successful. Eventually he moved back to his hometown, in part, I think, to prove that his last name would no longer be defined by poverty and all the IOUs. From my point of view, Ron did present a new family face and did great things in town to assuage his demons. He did so in a non-egotistical way, so that was good too. Dear old Ron is gone now because of a stroke, and I sure do miss him.

Isn’t it cool how all these elements came together, and even the dream as a whole, gave me something to talk about in this blog post. As I have said, I like these dreams as they provide some entertainment, and they can be educational if one takes time to reflect on them.

You can’t tell by reading, but it is now the next day, and I have woken from another dream. I figured that because my brain went to the trouble of producing it while I was writing a blog post about dreams, that perhaps I should share it.

This time I am going to mention two things that happened during the day, that I believe set the stage for this dream. It will help to understand the dream as I tell it. Early in the day I had driven my mom to her doctor’s appointment. As is typical, she was chatting away and mentioned the old days, specifically a story she likes to tell, about a girl I dated for about four years during high school and for a short while after that. Because I like to give my mom the gears sometimes, I pretended that I didn’t know who she was talking about and had a good private chuckle at her expense. Bad son! LOL! After a while she moved on to a different topic. After supper the same day, I watched an episode of Star Trek: TNG called Rightful Heir (S6.E23). It was about lieutenant Worf’s crisis of faith and his encounter with Kahless. I found the episode quite moving and emotional, and I even teared up a little bit during it.

It’s 6:30 am and I’ve just woken up from my vivid dream. It’s quite a bizarre dream and I’m not sure I even want to talk about it because it’s something that is very private to me and I think that telling you will make me feel more vulnerable than I really like to be or think that I want to be.

At any rate, the previous girlfriend I mentioned above, who eventually became a doctor, is often in my dreams, why, I don’t know, but she is in this one and we are off on a bit of an adventure. For some reason we have traveled to a different country and are staying at a retreat type facility, a place you might find while working with Doctors Without Borders, or the like, but not so desolate or isolated. It reminds me more of a Hutterite community; they weren’t poverty stricken; they just look like regular folks that lived in a community style place. I had come along with “the doctor” because I was looking for a change, something different, I suppose to reaffirm who I am, and I think this was related, or because of watching Worf’s journey and his visit to Boreth, the monastery where a group of spiritual travellers await the return of Kahless, a messianic figure in Klingon history, where he hopes to find or renew his faith, and to learn to look at life in a different way. So now the story line changes to the bizarre end of things and I am faced with washroom issues. Note that I am terrified, well not terrified but despise, public washrooms. I am overwrought with fear that somebody will hear me peeing or pooping. I know that it’s irrational, but I’ve always been this way. I prefer my washroom at home with the door closed and a noisy fan running. So anyway, in this dream, the community residence is minimal so they don’t have private washrooms in the bedrooms, like you would find in a hotel? For some reason, the toilet in this place is in the kitchen, it’s right at the end of the kitchen counter and people are milling all about. This is where you’re supposed to go to have a poop! So, I’ve gotten to the point where I really have to go, and I don’t know what else to do so I start to make a little bit of a joke about having to do this. I sit to do my business on the toilet and while there I tell the people to turn around and not look at me, all the while jokingly telling them how embarrassing this is and out of my wheelhouse. I make further jokes about when the time will come to wipe myself, and how much of a challenge it will be. As I finish up and I tell them I have completed the process, everybody cheers because I’ve done it, I’ve done this most fearful thing in public, and I’ve survived! Crazy, huh!?

Upon waking from this dream, I found the whole thing quite profound. It was both, you know, facing one’s fears and stepping outside one’s self-imposed boundaries. Doing something like this, this stepping outside of oneself, makes you a better person. It shows oneself that you can experience something different, and it’ll be OK. Even your worst fears, like pooping in front of others! It’s like a trial run in the dream world.

Thinking about this further, I think this dream, and the other one, are fresh on my mind because of writing this blog post and maybe that’s why I’m recalling them so well and voice recording upon waking. As with the other one I mentioned, I thinks there’s lots to learn from these dreams and a reason to appreciate my/our unconscious mind(s). The unconscious mind is providing a good service to us, providing good things to think about it. In my case, I think these are healthy dreams, and enjoyable too, as weird as they are.

I hope that you were able to see all the connections from the day’s events and the dream and could appreciate what I mentioned with regards to them.

Moving on…

At an earlier time in my life, I became interested in lucid dreaming and directed dreaming. Although I was able to direct my dreams to some degree by focusing intently on the desired topic before falling asleep, I was never able to have a lucid dream, where I knew I was dreaming and able to control, or drive, the dream. This was something I thought would be a great source of entertainment if I had been able to make it happen. Day dreaming, in the traditional sense, is much easier. 😊 As for directed dreaming, I haven’t tried that for a long time. It takes too much effort, and I find that I dream often enough to give me lots to ponder.

Next, I am going to talk about recurring dreams and dream analysis, which I believe work hand in hand.

One of my favorite components to dreaming is dream analysis. Are you familiar with the phrase “dreams are the windows into the unconscious?” It is often attributed to Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst from the Victorian era, who believed that dreams provide valuable insights into our unconscious mind. He famously described dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious,” emphasizing their importance in understanding our hidden desires and thoughts. Although I wasn’t a fan about much of what Freud had to say, he did lay the groundwork for others, like Carl Jung, who I preferred more in this area.

There is a famous joke that I have illustrated here with the help of our friend Loaf. The joke is about a fellow that visits his psychoanalyst and talks about a recurring dream where he continually visualizes a teepee and a pup tent. The psychoanalyst ponders this for a while and says, “Ah, that is interesting! As you see in your dream, both the teepee and the pup tent are types of tents. Since your dream always presents two of them, we can state with absolute certainty that your dream is telling you that you are too tense.” 😊 Of course, this is just a long-drawn-out way to make a play on words, but it is quite good, if you ask me. 👍😊

Two Tents – Created by Don Cheke

As for dream analysis, I think I would just like to drive home the fact that doing the analysis is almost always worth the effort.

Let’s focus more specifically on recurring dreams, which I feel is our unconscious directing us towards things that need attention in our life.

As before, I asked the Bing AI to expand on recurring dreams. It stated:

Recurring dreams are fascinating because they repeat themselves with little variation in their content. Here are some key points about them:

Characteristics of Recurring Dreams

1. Repetition: The same dream or theme occurs repeatedly over a period of time.
2. Emotional Intensity: These dreams often carry strong emotions, such as fear, anxiety, or frustration.
3. Common Themes: Common themes include being chased, falling, being unprepared for an exam, or losing teeth.

Possible Causes

1. Unresolved Issues: Recurring dreams can be linked to unresolved conflicts or stressors in waking life. They might reflect ongoing concerns or fears.
2. Trauma: People who have experienced trauma may have recurring dreams related to their traumatic experiences.
3. Habitual Thoughts: Persistent thoughts or worries can manifest as recurring dreams.

Psychological Insights

1. Subconscious Messages: These dreams might be your subconscious mind’s way of drawing attention to something important that needs to be addressed.
2. Personal Growth: Understanding and addressing the underlying issues of recurring dreams can lead to personal growth and emotional healing.

Coping Strategies

1. Dream Journaling: Keeping a dream journal can help identify patterns and themes in your recurring dreams.
2. Therapy: Talking to a therapist can help uncover and address the underlying issues causing the dreams.
3. Mindfulness and Relaxation: Practices like mindfulness and relaxation techniques can reduce stress and potentially decrease the frequency of recurring dreams.

Since I have already been vulnerable about my washroom business, I might as well tell you of a recurring dream that warns me that a washroom should be located in the near future, like very soon! It is typical of me to have a dream about needing a washroom not too long before I wake. The dream is always about the need to pee, but the scene is often quite different. Sometimes, I am out at the mall, and the washrooms are nowhere to be found. Nobody I ask knows where they are. I keep seeking but never encounter one. Other times I am in school and the washrooms are locked, due to faulty plumbing, or something like that.

Washroom Break – Created by Don Cheke

At any rate, the gist of the dreams is simple, I need to go, and there is nowhere to do so, so very stressful. I believe my unconscious is suggesting that I need to find a washroom in the conscious world – like NOW! I learned to pay heed to the recurring washroom dream long ago, actually in my late teens, when I was still drinking and in bed after a hard night of doing so. Of course, I had the recurring washroom dream, and instead of realizing the urgency of the situation, I just let go and peed my bed. I have been embarrassed by this my whole life, so now that you know, maybe I can finally let it go. 😊 Since I have never peed the bed again, you can assume that I always pay heed to the pee dream. I also quit drinking over 40 years ago, so I don’t have to worry about that causing additional urinary mishaps. Please God, don’t let me develop prostrate trouble like so many other men that I know have and find themselves having to pee many times during the night. Poor buggers. You know who you are. 😊

Throughout my whole adult life, I have had two other separate recurring dreams, never at the same time but more so, one for a stretch of time, now and again, and a second one, that follows a similar pattern. I don’t know if they have a specific meaning, but I surmise that they occur during times of stress and when I am struggling a bit with varied things.

The first dream I think of as my stolen truck dream. This dream is always a variation on a theme, in that every time I buy a new truck someone steals it. I always report the theft to the police but nothing ever gets solved and I get irate and think about all the “damage” I would like to cause the thieves. As soon as I replace the truck with a new one it too gets stolen. Thinking about this now, perhaps I should direct my dream and buy a car instead. 😊 Truth be told, my heart is always set on a new truck.

The second dream I think of as my timecard dream. In it, I am always working at Safeway, something I did for seven and a half years in my early life. In the dream I continually forget to punch in at the time clock and even forget to fill the timecard out manually as we could do in those days if needed. The manager of the store, Henry, one of the actual managers I worked with, liked me, so in the dream he always fills the timecard out for me and my paycheck arrives every Thursday, as it did in reality. In the dream, Henry gets transferred to a different store and the new manager never fills in my card. As such, I would go weeks at a time without ever getting paid. For some reason, I can’t get myself trained to punch in and out as needed, so the issue of “no pay,” never gets resolved. As a side note, my older brother Dave, worked with Henry for a time, and he said that wasn’t the Henry he knew. By this he meant Henry wouldn’t be filling in anyone’s timecard. Maybe Henry liked me better! 😊 Sorry Dave!

Really, the whole point behind all of the above is that I just think it is important to spend time deciphering one’s dreams, especially if one can sense some stress in one’s life. There may be some clue as to how to fix it, or at least confirm that something is off, as my recurring dreams usually show me.

We can’t wrap this blog post up without talking a bit about other people’s dreams. Do you like to hear about other people’s dreams? I generally don’t, because they often seem pointless and not relevant to my own existence. They typically sound like unintelligible ramblings to me. That said, I do listen to my wife tell me about her dreams, since she is important to me, and we often discuss the meaning behind them. Good partners do things like that. Right!?👍😊

Do you want to continue a discussion about dreams? I suggest listening to Bob Dylan’s “115^th Dream,” a song he wrote and recorded in 1965. I always tell Denise that this song was all you ever really needed in high school history and English class since it covers so many topics, including Christopher Columbus and Moby Dick. It even has some Monty Python in there, if you look closely (Or maybe it’s the case of Monty Python has some Bob Dylan in it!). I should mention that whenever I mention Bob Dylan to Denise, she always mocks me about how I seem to like singers that can’t sing. Oy! Sacrilegious! 😊

At that, let’s just end with a “Happy dreaming!”

Donald B. Cheke – October 7, 2024