I think that one of the reasons that it's so easy to cling to organized religion is that our minds can't fully grasp the significance of life's grander meaning in relation to the soul and the universe. Religion gives us a firm set of man-made guidelines for navigating life, and it allows and sometimes even encourages us to become complacent followers rather than engaged learners. It also tends to "fill in" answers to tough questions with easy-to-swallow platitudes. While this can be comforting, I think it also gives us "spiritual blinders" that block out any concepts that we don't understand or which don't fit neatly into our chosen belief system. The result is fear of the unknown. We accept certain systems to define the physical world, such as the measurement of time and space, but a breakdown occurs when we try to relate the physical world to the spiritual world because the same science that performs so smoothly for us when we apply it to our physical reality doesn't describe our spiritual reality nearly as clearly. It's like trying to understand calculus with a first-grade textbook- we understand the basics, but we haven't even come close to learning all of the concepts that we would need to know in order to make sense of much more advanced math. That's why I became so frustrated with Christianity as I experienced it in the church- the spiritual leaders who I encountered were usually wise when it came to teaching me to love and be kind, but they didn't fully answer all of the questions that I had about paranormal activity, or life after death, or the significance of dreaming. So I was terrified of so-called ghosts and demons, because I thought they were related to Satan and hell, and I was even more scared of the afterlife, because even though the church dangled the possibility of entering heaven in front of me, it seemed more likely to me that I would make a mistake that would send me straight to a pit of fire and brimstone.
On an everyday basis, I had so many questions and thoughts about the significance of dreams, and I still do. I've always suspected that the emotions and events that come to my mind's surface when I am asleep are somehow more intense than what other people experience. In my case, because I didn't really know what that meant, or how I was supposed to deal with it, I had nightmares. I can still remember nightmares that I had at 5 years old, and then the subsequent recurring themes that danced through my slumbering consciousness growing up. I used to have a lot of nightmares about bridges; specifically falling off bridges and plummeting to my death. Now I suspect that these dreams indicate that I really might have fallen off a bridge and died in a past lifetime. I have dreams about a terrible car accident too, and those are even more vivid. I didn't know how to interpret these before- was it a premonition, or was I subconsciously afraid of being in a car? It's really comforting to me to consider that I'm simply remembering the end of a past-life, and that even if I do encounter trauma on a similar scale again, I don't have to be afraid of death.
But I also feel that dreaming is more than a twisty, familiar version of your memories that you play back in your mind while you sleep. I'm not a neuroscientist or a psychologist, but think about what sleep is. The physical signs of sleep are obvious. Your body becomes relaxed. Your breathing slows. Your eyes close, your muscles loosen, and you eventually drift away. But where does the YOU that is your soul go when your BODY is resting? I've started to consider that possibility that what you see and what you do when you are asleep is just as "real" as the world you live in when you are awake. Some people might see this as an opportunity to talk about parallel universes or alternate realities, and while I don't know a lot about those concepts yet, I'm willing to admit that our dreams may be more rooted in reality than we realize or could ever fully understand in this lifetime. Interestingly, my own experience with dreaming over the past month or two is what really forced me to face this possibility. I started to notice that I was returning to the same place every night in my dreams, but instead of repeating the same scenario over and over again, I would just pick up where I left off. It feels like I am part of an actual series of sequential events, and it is incredibly unnerving. I've actually been losing sleep because of it, so dreaming is a topic that I would really like to learn more about.
One noticeable feature of these dreams is that the overall setting is the same. There are a few different places within the same "world" that I have gone to, although the buildings that stick out to me the most are a high school that is eerily similar to my alma mater, a large, ornate hotel, and a mental institution that I am usually locked in as a patient (interesting, considering my history of mental illness in this lifetime). The circumstances that I return to are often the same as well: I'm separated from loved ones, and experiencing great emotional distress. Sometimes I'm trying to pack, but I never actually manage to leave. Other times my ability to communicate is compromised, and I'm panicking because I know that there is nothing I can do about it. There are enough similarities between this dream world and my waking reality to suggest that there is some sort of connection, but I don't think that the link can be fully explained by what we know about memories.
Mainstream science currently concedes to the existence of dreams, but it limits itself by only acknowledging the hard data, such as brain scans and quantifiable observations of sleep patterns. Details about what each person experiences while they are dreaming is unique to the soul, and it is difficult to validate these experiences when in order to record and study them we must use our limited, human frame of reference as our only guide. Of course, that's part of what makes dreams so fascinating, although I'm guessing that unlike me, most people probably brush them off relatively quickly. But think about how much of our lives we spend asleep. If you're lucky enough to get eight hours every night, that's a third of your life spent sleeping! It's clear that our bodies need the rest, but dreaming indicates that our mind is perfectly capable of keeping itself occupied in the meantime. Who's to say that we don't participate in other, similar lifetimes while we sleep?
I think this has a lot to do with how we view the relationship between our soul and our body. Once you can stop viewing them as the same thing, rather than two separate entities, it seems only logical to consider that the soul can actually exist outside of the human body. On the other hand, we know that the body does need the soul to give it life, so it stands to reason that the soul's experience is actually more "real" than that of the physical body. After all, think about the thousands of reports of near-death and out of body experiences floating around. Without getting into the differences between clinical death and biological death, this phenomenon suggests that it is possible for the soul to exit the body and then return. We usually only relate the soul's departure to death, but what if the soul actually does leave every time we sleep to go poke around somewhere else? I'll admit that sounds creepy- after all, does that mean that your sleeping body is just a soulless shell tucked in a bed? But when we return to our discussion of what the soul actually is- a fragment of a much larger consciousness- it's easier to understand how the soul could be in what we would think of as two places at once. In fact, just by living in the physical world the soul is present in more than one plane of existence. Because we are all part of a larger whole, the spiritual "self" that we experience on earth is like a deaf, blind version of who we really are. I think that by making an effort to pay attention to our dreams, we open ourselves up to the ability to absorb lessons that can help us while we are awake. I even think it's possible to work through negative karma in our dreams- that could be another reason why we experience nightmares. My theory is that by containing this energy in the mind, the soul helps avoid trauma to the physical body that might accidentally end the lifetime, while still receiving the benefit of the lesson learned.
Dreaming is also an important element of many religions. In Sunday school, I learned about Joseph, who had a dream that he and his brothers were gathering grain. First, each brother bowed to his own bundle of grain. Next, the sun, the moon, and the stars bow to Joseph himself. The story goes on to say that Joseph's brothers were so disturbed by this dream that they plotted to kill him, but even though they managed to get him thrown into jail, they were ultimately unsuccessful and he did, indeed, become an important ruler. So what does this teach us about dreams? Christian doctrine teaches us that this is a reminder to be patient and to trust God's plan. I do agree that the importance of patience is a valuable lesson, but I don't think that's the limit to the information this parable is giving us. To me, it's a flashing billboard saying: DREAMS ARE IMPORTANT! PAY ATTENTION TO THEM! One of the things that has always bothered me about studying literature is that it often feels forced to try and extract a deeper meaning from a text than what was really intended by the author, and many of the Bible studies that I attended growing up were guilty of encouraging the exact same behavior. There's a difference between reading a passage, forming an opinion or reaction, and discussing it with others for the purpose of personal growth, versus twisting the words and distorting the context to further your personal agenda. The Bible uses a lot of metaphors and parables to illustrate certain specific points, but sometimes the framework of these stories also contain clues to bigger, universal truths. Instead of accepting someone else's interpretation of the Bible and other religious texts- even if that someone is a trusted leader with useful insight- it's still important to engage in personal spiritual study. How do you know what you believe if you are just taking someone else's word for it? Allowing someone else's truth to fill in as your own is easy, but as I've already discovered, searching for your own truth is much more fulfilling.
-L
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