Mental Health Monday - 10.31.22

#mentalhealthmonday#mentalhealthawareness

Of dreams and nightmares.

We sleep and we dream. Some of us remember our dreams in vivid detail, real memories of alternate lives lived in other places and times. Others believe they do not dream, though most do, merely lacking recollection. Still others, dream lucid dreams, walking the pathways of their subconscious as you and I walk through a shopping mall, or a mountain meadow.

We do not know what dreams are. Whether they are the mind attempting to make sense of stress, trauma, or unresolved sensory stimuli, or perhaps they are the way our minds slip free of space-time at a quantum level, allowing us glimpses of alternate universes and timelines. Whatever our dreams are, they have an undeniable impact on our waking lives.

With so much that one could possibly speak on regarding dreams, I will say this; dreams represent possibility.

Whether we wake from a particularly pleasant dream into a banal and tedious existence, do not mourn the loss of the dream, but instead see the world with a new possibility. Each day is an opportunity to make some aspect of our dream life real. Use them as inspiration.

Nightmares and the terrors of the mind can be truly debilitating. The mind seems capable of inflicting deep psychic wounds on itself during sleep, and conjuring horrors beyond our comprehension. What value could be gained from these aberrations? Well, they end, for one. That is a lesson in and of itself. Also, they serve as a warning, a sensory indicator that something may not be right within ourselves. There may be some stress, some strain, some illness that requires our attention. At the very least, they put us on guard for a little bit, and that's not always a bad thing.

Whether you dream, or not. Or, if you walk the dream world as a regular visitor, I hope you rest, recover, and heal. We all need good sleep, dreaming aside.

Happy Halloween!

Have a great week.

Be safe.

- DJR