Whom are we running from in a sleep?

AND WHAT IS A DREAM?

As psychological studies show, everyone has bad dreams. Someone less often, someone more often. More often than not, bad dreams are dreamed in the first half of the night, and we forget them. And that's great. Because in them we often have to flee from monsters, from all that rubbish that we associate with fear. Because if you are scared, you have to run away, even the unconscious knows about it.

On an unconscious level, we are still people of the Stone Age - Cro-Magnons. And a good Cro-Magnon, as you know, must run faster than a Mayharoda and beat with an ax harder than a short-faced bear with a paw. Therefore, the two main programs of survival for us were once (and, apparently, still are) runaway and attack, triggered by the notorious "fight or flight" stress program.

Only in modern life we are not allowed to be over the head of our boss with a stone ax (even if we want to) and run away from a traffic cop intending to issue a fine. And in a dream - everything is possible. Even a traffic cop should be presented as a second-level demon, so that it would be more honorable to get away from him. And we do it because ...

SO WHAT IS A DREAM?

For a dream is nothing more than a visualized thinking process. Although "visualization" is a not entirely correct term, as it implies that in a dream all our thoughts become pictures that we can contemplate. This is certainly not the case. It's just that in a dream, our attention is directed deep into our psychic reality, because the main task of sleep is to systematize and streamline the information acquired during the day. So we see what we simply do not notice in wakefulness - chains of figurative associations, as the unconscious thinks.

Thus, a dream is a film about ourselves, about our idea of the world, about our way of thinking, about our behavioral habits. If you love to run in your dreams, then you love to run in life too. If you often take up an ax in your dreams, then you love to fight in your wakefulness. Well, if you have beautiful and peaceful dreams, then you are a Buddha, and I am following you.

However, I am a Buddha myself. Which is what I wish for you.