The Fundamental, Subjective Nature of Dreaming
There are places I see (only) in my dreams.
Typically, my dreams feel as if an amalgamation between pieces of memory intermixed with pop culture associations. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t feel like I’m dreaming, and the “real” world we’re in is – in actuality – a lucid experientiality mistaken as such. Psychiatrists refer to a set of experiences within this context of phenomenological symptomology as derealization, i.e. a sensation of being not quite alive, dreaming (at all times). Yes, there’s certain precedence, but I believe some people can have thoughts of the existential variety, though perhaps my own are at-best transient, fleeting, brush in the wind. I don’t mean to sound I’m attempting to armchair-diagnose anybody, and for what it’s worth, there’s some in my history to warrant a discussion.
Maybe it’s just the sentimental parts of me, and in the end, the esoteric nature of our dreams will remain forever as such. The times I do deeply dream in REM sleep, my subconsciousness is like a hidden ego, Jungian animus (ala’ an “Id”) that escapes in manifest. Sometimes, though, I feel as if I’m “awake” within a dream, like a character in a play suddenly coming to and realizing they’re on-stage, etc. Then there’s the abundance (and compulsivity) of my daydreams, too, to which I engage with fervent desire, an inner want, a desperation to feel something greater, a missing puzzle piece. It’s hard to describe what I’m trying to say, but my dreams feel real, and the day-to-day traversings, the opposite. The feelings I’m attempting to characterize differentiate (I believe) from commonplace views of heaven and/or afterlife, etc. No, what I’m talking about feels more...ephemeral, like a wistfulness of conjecture betwixt reason and feeling, a space between rationale and primality, though I suppose this all sounds a bit woo-woo, but I digress.
I feel connected to my dreams, in a way that surpasses sentimentality, creative thinking, or self-delusion (I hope). The best way I can describe this feeling is like: imagine two shows, two very, very different ideas, and while one is on commercial (“reality”), the other is simultaneously on and happening (“dreaming”), yet, they’re both being broadcast on the same television, using the same electrical current, screen, etc.
Dreams are literally living things, comprised of synaptic pulses between connective tissue in our brains, and thus, they’re comprised of biological matter. In that way, dreams are a part of me, because they’re part of my brain matter, but I think that’s only some of it, a very literal way to interpret this idea of “connection” to dreams. Whether or not my own are of substantive value, purely on the basis of their own existence, is irrelevant, because we all do, have a trip to some “other side” when we, “go there,” figuratively speaking. If we’re talking about whether or not I want my dreams to, “be real,” then I’d say: of course (and who wouldn’t?). Everything’s feels so more beautiful there, even if my apparitions of experientiality are just biochemical byproducts.
Is the “reality” that we dream, and thus, the dream intertwined and affixed of an architecture to the monolith of objectivity? Is the validity of consciousness contingent upon being tethered to empirical stimuli, and reflecting as such? When do we stop dreaming, when we wake, or when we sleep? Are the daydreams that escape our vapid or innocuous obligations, truer than the things we must do in order to survive? What’s realer, a dream that we have that makes us who we are, or a reality that everybody sees, but is the opposite of what we want?
...I just (like to )think, there’s a hidden side to everything.
And maybe, in some sense, I’m still dreaming. Or, not…?
