Meaning Of Dreams

The content of our dreams has traditionally been thought to reveal a higher spiritual order. Jacob's Ladder by the artist and mystic William Blake (1757 - 1827) portrays the dream of Jacob from the book of Genesis:"And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it."

Sleep is one of several types of daily rhythm, also known as circadian rhythm, seen in the human body. Other rhythms involve the body temperature, which peaks for most people between about five and seven P.M and is lowest between about four and six A.M.

Most of the endocrine glands operate according to circadian rhythms as well. When a person moves to a new activity cycle, as when going from a day shift to a night shift, or flying to a new time zone, it can take several days, even a week or two according to some studies, to completely readjust. During this time, he or she is said to experience jet lag, a feeling of general fatigue accompanied by decreased efficiency, difficulty with sleeping and even digestive disorders.

Much of what is known about sleep has been learned through the study of the small continuous electrical signals recorded from the cortex. These are recorded by a device called an electroencephalogram (EEG) that depicts arousal patterns in a waveform graph. A number of distinct EEG patterns, or "rhythms", are commonly recognized.

Jungian therapists recognize three levels of dreams. Level 1 dreams have no deep symbolic meaning, and are just remnants of the recent thoughts and feeling s of the conscious mind. Level 2 dreams use symbols to express material in the personal unconscious -- material that relates primarily to our physical and sexual preoccupations -- and in this sense they employ symbols in a similar way to that proposed by Freud. Level 3 dreams, or what Jung called "great dreams", are qualitatively different. They contain emotionally-charged and powerful symbols that express the innate qualities and behavioural predispositions that make us human -- what Jung called archetypes. The archetypes reside deep in the collective unconscious of every person, and can emerge only in symbolic form because they evolved before humankind acquired speech; and because they are so ancient, archetypal symbols are common to all humans.

Many believe that Jung's concept of the collective unconsicous has no basis in fact: how could these ancient symbols, they ask, be passed on over the centuries? To these sceptics, the only explanation -- infinitely less mystical than Jung's -- is that cultural influences have been brought to bear on our dreams.

The meaning of dreams
Dreams have been interpreted in most cultures since ancient times. modern theories of the meaning of dreams began with Sigmund Freud. In his great work, The Interpretation of Dreams, he suggested that the manifest content of a dream conceal a hidden or latent content which expresses some form of wish fulfillment -- often dealing with sex or violence -- that is not acceptable to the conscious mind.

At the opposite pole, some brain scientists suggest that dreams have no meaning at all, but represent random activity of the cortex during sleep. A variation on this view is offered by Nobel Prize-winning scientists Francis Crick, who argues that dreams are the accidental by-products of the fine-tuning and "review" that the brain undergoes while we sleep. One implication of this "fine-tuning" theory is that the meaning or stories we find in our dreams are actually interpretations we impose on the otherwise random bits and pieces of information and memory our brains are reviewing, all in a night's work.

Perhaps the most balanced view is to recognize that dreams are a basic biological event, but that their content reflects major psychological issues of the dreamer.



Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. We have a right to claim our own feelings. Sometimes we get angry, but hold it inside because we think it's wrong to feel it. If anger builds inside us, it expands like a balloon ready to burst. If not released, it can make us depressed, or even physically ill. When we give ourselves permission to feel anger, we are better able to get rid of it in a healthy way.

Our inner voice can tell us how to let go of our anger. And once we've released it, we can easily get in touch with the feelings that caused it.

When we recognize our anger for what it is -- one feeling among many others that makes us unique -- it loses its significance, and we can prevent it from consuming us.

Indira Ghandi said, "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist".

When we let go of our anger we can honestly embrace each other with open arms.