NonFiction: The Bedside Guide to Dreams (#5)

I have always been interested in dreams because, well, mine seem to be too crazy for words and I often find myself wondering "what is up with that??" Are my dreams trying to tell me something? Is this the creative side of my personality expressing myself? Do I secretly want to make out with that person because, oh, ew, gross - why am I dreaming about this?!? So I was naturally drawn to the title of this book and really hoped that it might shed some light on the subject.

I don't normally read a lot of non-fiction, something I am trying to change, and in the past it has mostly been character driven stories like Into Thin Air or a book about a couples rafting trip in Baja or a woman's story about her experience with breast cancer. I mean, there were my text books in University but sometimes that was more skimming and attending class than actual reading. So this is sort of a new experience for me.

The format of the book is pretty easy to follow, the author breaks dreams down into 27 sub-types and gives fairly clear definitions complete with real life examples. I am the queen of needing examples in order to understand things better so I really appreciated the effort - although all of the example dreams seemed fairly clear-cut. I guess what I am trying to say is that the book gave me a better abstract understanding of how dreams work but didn't necessarily give me any personal insight into my own dreams. The author does say repeatedly that the book is a only stepping stone and that the best way to understand your own dreams is to work with them on a daily basis. She suggests keeping a dream journal and cites a 5 step method to dream analysis: noting your emotions during and after the dream, finding a theme, matching the theme to real life, noting the symbols/symbolism in the dream, and the application of any insights. I like the idea of a dream journal, what scares me about the practical application of such a task is that I am likely to have a dream, wake up in the middle of the night and need to write about it and this will cut into my precious sleep time. Plus my memory of dreams is not always that stellar - I remember the really vivid ones but a lot of the time I wake up with a sense of shapes or colors and a complete lack of plot.

The author also spends a lot of time talking about how everything is connected - kind of like Jung and the idea of a collective unconcious. She dwells on the amazing (and as yet underexplored) powers of the unconcious - how the psyche seems to be aware of things that we are not always conciously aware of - and mentions how she believes it is possible to travel to other worlds or realms in our dreams. She claims that these trips might actually occur and are remembered as dreams because that is the method the unconcious uses for communication. Ever have your body thud against your bed right as you woke up? Likely it was your soul returning from another astral plane.

I don't know how much I believe or disbelieve ... but I have had enough weird dreams and odd sleeping experiences to believe that anything might be possible.