[News] Funny (and not true) Study Finds Dogs Twitching In Sleep Are Dreaming About Tearing Owners Limb From Limb
[News] Scientists identify parts of brain involved in dreaming
Brain scans – Scientists have unpicked the regions of the brain involved in dreaming, in a study with significant implications for our understanding of the purpose of dreams and of consciousness itself. What’s more, changes in brain activity have been found to offer clues as to what the dream is about.
Read the full story here:
Source: Scientists identify parts of brain involved in dreaming | Science | The Guardian
[News] The Art of Dreams | The Public Domain Review
Dreams have long proved a fertile ground for human creativity and expression, and no less so than in the visual arts, giving rise to some of its most arresting images. In addition to the many and varied dreams so important to religion and myth there has emerged, in the last few centuries since the birth of Romanticism, an exploration of the more personal dream-world. Indeed, with its link to the unconscious, the form has perhaps proved the perfect vehicle for those artists looking to surface that which lies
When Do We Dream? All the time
We dream when we drop inside and call up a mental map of where we might have left our keys.
We dream when poetry sends our mind off onto an associative journey.
When we lose ourselves in a video marathon.
When we feel a bit off and we let that dominate our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and energy-making, we unknowingly invoke our imagination to expand that feeling to our top to bottom.
When we have to guess.
When we free associate.
When a scent takes us backward in time and we reconnect to where we were and what we were doing at that time.
When we reach a destination after driving or walking and not remember much of what happened during our commuting time.
When two things connect and a new idea bursts upon us.
When we listen to the rain, the waves, the wind and we end up following the sound’s lead.
… to know a few.
[Book Review] Sleep Thinking – Eric Maisel
I don’t recommend that many books and the one’s that I do must be either a comprehensive treatment of a subject or one that has specific techniques fully outlined. Eric Maisel’s book is both.
Maisel turns his psychologist/writer skills to the study of our unconscious and when it is doing it’s freest work, while we are sleeping. Among its many duties and capabilities is to do what Maisel calls, sleep thinking.
We are already familiar with sleep thinking. “Give me some time to sleep on it,” is a common approach to decision making. We know that some how, during our sleeping, a part of our brain will work away and make our options clearer by morning.
This behind the scenes work is different than studying our dreams. Sleep thinking is more to the point and sticks with what we are most concerned about. It isn’t overly poetic in what it shows us and sleep thinking results are more practical.
Eric Maisel is a precise man. His book is not filled fluff. He jumps in provides the step-by-step approach to sleep thinking and then offers specific directions for common areas of interest such as building creativity, removing inner obstacles, and finding solutions to large challenges.
The only special note I have about this book is this suggestion: start off easy and simple. Read the first chapters and then get down to work. Ask for insight or answers to something important to you and work that for a few days/a week. Repeat for another week or so. Don’t get bogged down when starting a sleep thinking practice by taking on too much. Get the principal down and do some preliminary work. Then, if called, jump back into Maisel’s detailed work program.
This book is out-of-print but is still available ($1.00 to $4.00) so get it while you can. Here is the Amazon link.
The Kindle edition of this book is: The Power of Sleep Thinking – Link
Visualize, Imagine, and Dream – The Important Differences
