12.06.2007

The Trouble with Sleeping

From an interesting series of articles called, The Trouble with Dream Studies, on the relationship of dreams to science, from the Dream Studies Portal:

"...in the study of dreams our personal beliefs influence our perception so much that we literally experience different realities. That’s why dream interpretation is dismissed by hard scientists, and also why Freudians dream about their mothers and Jungians dream about Germanic mythological creatures."


This is one of the basic tenets that I hold, both about dreams and waking life. What we believe influences what we choose to pay attention to. And what we attend to influences, or even directly creates, both our waking experiences and dream adventures. The trick is in learning to look at your beliefs clear enough to be able to choose what to attend to, and thus how to live. One of the clearest places to see these beliefs at work, in a somewhat hyper-symbolic way, is in our dreams.

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