I just finished reading this article on the New York Times’ website: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/opinion/cancer-treatment-dreams.html (sorry, it’s behind a pay wall).

In summary, this young woman is highly distraught over finding out she had metastatic breast cancer. Because she was so young (36), the doctors had a hard time recommending chemo and radiation treatments to her, because of the known, long-term, harmful side-effects they generally incur on a patient. They told her that, if it were their decision to make, they would be “50/50”, which is a nice way of saying, “I don’t know”.

In this piece, the author presents 3 dreams she had over the course of her cancer episode that led her along down her course of treatment:

1. A dream of two helicopters crash landing on a freeway, directly in front of her. This dream convinced her that she aught to have a mammogram done to check whether a lump she had found 9 months earlier was cancer or not (doctors at the time had said it was a benign cyst).
2. In another dream, she was carrying 2 jugs with which to put out a fire in her apartment, but only 1 of those jugs had water in it, which happened to be enough to put out the fire. This dream convinced her to have a single mastectomy instead of a double mastectomy, because “one was enough”.
3. The last dream was one of all darkness except for the voice of an American man who simply said, “You must continue with radiation.” When a decision was needed to “boost” the strength of the radiation therapy to kill some potential metastasized cancer that came up on a scan, this dream convinced her to move ahead with that course of action.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of all this. Certainly, the conclusions drawn about dreams 1 and 2 may be her waking mind eagerly looking for meaning where there might not be any. I mean, she was emotional, desperate, and looking for answers. She could have read more into them than was there. Maybe she already had a gut feeling of what she should do, and these dreams gave her a sense of justification to move forward with that course of action. Maybe they were generated by her heightened state of anxiety. But, on the other hand, I have had situations where I was desperate to find the right course of action, and similar allegorical scenes in my dreams seemed to provide answers. Is there something deep down in our consciousness that responds to a deep and sincere plea for help?

The third dream leaves much less room for subjective interpretation. Where did that voice come from? From within? Or from without? The extra radiation did kill the cancer, but it left her with heart failure that she will need to treat for the rest of her life. What was the motive of the owner of that voice? Did this result in more good than harm?

I only have questions. I’ll keep working on my dreams in the meantime.

Please leave comments below.

Today I remembered a dream. It was the first time remembering in a couple weeks, and so it was a special thing. Not the dream itself, but remembering it was the special thing. And perhaps because it was special, I also remembered how I woke up.

Looking back on the days when I remember my dreams, I can see a pattern. It appears that if I wake up slowly (without an alarm clock), this seems to have an effect on my ability to remember my dreams. As in, I’ll just lay in bed quietly, sort of ‘adjusting’ to being awake without thinking about much of anything. This may seem like a small thing, but if I could do this every day I think I would remember a lot more dreams. 

Just laying in bed without immediately getting up and going about my morning routine gives my mind a chance to recall what I was doing in the Subtle World just before waking up. If I give my body tasks to perform, my mind seems to track along with those tasks and I’ll forget everything. Or, if right away I start thinking about the upcoming day and the list of things I need to accomplish, the same thing happens - no dream recall. 

So it looks like the ‘just laying in bed for a little while’ part is just as important as the ‘being awake without thinking about much of anything’ part. This got me thinking about how we wake up in the morning, and how much that matters. 

Have you ever owned a drugstore alarm clock? You know, the one that sounds like the raging screed of a very pissed off, meth-addled Godzilla going off every .5 seconds next to your head? Many of you may not be old enough to remember such things. Since the advent of cell phones and their various utilities such as built-in alarm clocks, many of us (mercifully) don’t recall such things. But if you do remember, you know what I’m talking about! I can remember actually flinching so hard I threw my back out a couple times. I even used to get anxious when I would hear any alarm clock sound that remotely resembled my own, like when I was watching TV. Short of being doused with a bucket of ice water and simultaneously having your leg hair removed with duct tape, it was the worst way to wake up, ever. 

The. Worst. And it was every day!

All this got me thinking about how we wake up, and how we should wake up. 

We all know that some of us are very deep sleepers, and some may require having an alarm sound that is loud, brash, so annoying that nothing could possibly sleep through it. To these folks I say this: I get it. It’s totally understandable, and if you need this to get out of bed and get to work on time, then use what works. If you are interested in more dream recall, I might suggest trying out different sounds to wake up to, maybe on a weekend when it doesn’t matter if you oversleep. Keep in mind that we need to be able to trust our alarm clocks to wake us up, otherwise the anxiety over whether or not we’ll be awake on time will cause us to actually lose sleep. So definitely experiment and test out new things over the course of a few nights - just make sure what you settle on will do the trick.

Anyway, please read on!

If you don’t have a cell phone, or don’t use one as an alarm clock, I would guess that you use a proper alarm clock purchased anywhere from a drugstore to Amazon. Try listening to the sound your alarm clock makes (when you are already fully awake) and take a few notes. What does the sound remind you of? How does the sound make you feel? What kinds of thoughts does it trigger in you? If the notes you take reflect predominantly negative feelings, perhaps you should look into changing the sound it makes if it has several to choose from. Or if it doesn’t make any sounds that you like, maybe it’s time for a new alarm clock.   

Note: The long-term effects of cell-phone proximity have not been studied. Nor have the effects of cell-phone proximity ever been studied in relation to human sleep cycles. This article does not explore these issues.

Lots of people use cell phones to wake up in the morning. It sits beside the bed and does its thing at the appointed time. Obviously the same questions apply as with the store-purchased alarm clock: What does the sound remind you of? How does the sound make you feel? What kinds of thoughts does it trigger in you? Again, take a moment for self-reflection and decide whether you should change the sound you use as an alarm. If your cell phone doesn’t have one you particularly like, maybe purchasing a new alarm clock with more pleasing sounds would be best, since getting a new cell phone is a major purchase for most people. 

I don’t consider myself to be a deep sleeper, and nor do I consider myself a light sleeper. But over the years I have found that it doesn’t take an ear-piercing racket to wake me up. In fact, quieter, soothing sounds can do the same job and it’s been great. 

I’d like to make one more point with regard to how we wake up. Here are a couple things that I take as facts because my experience has confirmed them (your experience may vary but I think these things are pretty universal):

• Dream recall is best when the body is in nearly the same state as when asleep
• Dream recall is best when the mind is in nearly the same state as when asleep
• If upon waking the mind is kept on the task of remembering dreams without being dispersed in several directions, then dream recall is better
• Alarm clocks that jar us awake with the use of annoying or otherwise displeasing sounds tend to hurt our chances of remembering our dreams (and really, it’s just not a great way to start the day)

With these points in mind, I would suggest that an alarm that begins as a soft sound (that you could just barely hear) and gets louder over time would be best. It should be a sound that you don’t feel unnerved or upset about when you hear it, and yet it should effectively wake you up. The reason I think this would be best is that our consciousnesses would then be slowly moved from the awareness we have in the Subtle World to the awareness of the physical. This in contrast to an unpleasant shock that disturbs the mind in such a way that it cannot hold onto the dream-like state and loses all memory of it.  

Once awake (snooze alarms will be covered in a later article - stay tuned!) one should avoid thinking about any minor concerns (grocery lists, getting the kids to soccer practice after work, etc.) for a little while. Maybe give it five minutes and just hang out in bed…and see what you can remember from your time in the Subtle Realm! 

I do not endorse any product or retailer, but below are a couple links for “gentle-awake” alarm clocks that I found after a quick internet search. If you find something that works for you, please don’t hesitate to post a comment and link to it. Tell us what kind of a difference it’s made in your life and in your ability to remember your dreams!

http://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-gentle-wake-alarm-clocks.html

https://www.amazon.com/slp/gentle-alarm-clocks/czmvzs9jowzb4p8

I recently dealt with something in my personal life that was extremely difficult.  Honestly, it was the most difficult thing I’ve had to deal with in my life so far.

During this last year as I was dealing with it, I was not sleeping very well, or very much, and was dreaming even less.  The few times I did dream, the scenery therein was typically very dark (night time setting) and the person who was playing the major role in my stress/drama was always there in my dream to wake me up. 

That ordeal ended a month ago and I’ve noticed a very sharp increase in the vividness and quantity of dreams I’m having.  Not to mention that I’ve been sleeping wonderfully (a full, uninterrupted 8 hours last night!).

It seems like a no-brainer to say that stress affects sleep, but I had no idea the tremendous influence it can have over one’s dream life, too.  I didn’t directly link my lack of dream life to my stress.  I thought it was just part of a regular cycle one might go through in life.  My dream life has certainly been very active at sometimes and waned at others.  I never correlated it to anything that was happening in my life, but now it is undeniable.

When considering the state and quality of my life, it only makes sense now to consider my dream life as well.  It is about 33% of my life, after all.  As my waking life steadily improves, I fully expect my dream life will as well.

The Reality of Imagination

Science has proven that if a person sits down and imagines themselves in a heated argument, that the exact same centers of the brain are activated as when a person is actually in a heated argument. While the flow of neuron interactions may be different between real and imagined events as this article indicates,:

https://www.livescience.com/49244-imagination-reality-brain-flow-direction.html

...the same neurological networks within the brain are engaged. Indeed, anyone who has found themselves thinking of any kind of emotionally-charged interaction after the fact, can confirm that the exact same emotions that they experienced during the interaction will surface while simply thinking about it. On a similar note, all of the incredible, very real inventions that make our lives so good have been discovered by way of the imagination of the inventor. In both instances, imagination becomes reality. 

My experience has been that my consciousness does not differentiate between ‘real’ and ‘imagined’. Both seem to occur with equal reality to my mind. If I think about an upsetting event (real or imagined), I get upset. If I think about playing with my favorite pet, I get all warm and happy inside. So it kinda makes me wonder, when I leave my physical body at night and have experiences in the subtle world (i.e. dreaming), just how real are these experiences? However bizarre the circumstances, however strange the juxtaposition of events or things, my mind perceives and experiences them as being real. 

What does that mean for me in a practical sense? After giving this some thought, I think this question is best answered with a question: what do I want in life? Like most people, my answer involves the goal of happiness. So how do I get this happiness in my life?

The way I see it, the quality of my dreams - good or bad - just like the quality of my life in the physical world, depends wholly upon me. When my thoughts tend toward the positive, and I genuinely feel drawn to goodness, be it beauty, truth, benevolence, I will find myself attracted to people, things, and situations that reflect these qualities. On the other hand, if my thoughts are drawn to things such as addictions, hate, or anger, then I find myself being drawn to other people, things, and situations that reflect those qualities. I have been able to actually observe this in my life. 

For instance, I used to have a fascination for news stories about people who did crazy stuff while on drugs. I would be browsing the news and find a bizarre headline with a couple of weird pictures that I couldn’t resist clicking on, and I’d read the story and marvel at whatever the story had to offer. Then at night, I would quite often find myself (in my dreams) hanging out with people who were doing drugs. So I tried a thought-experiment - I stopped clicking on and reading stories of that nature. And you guessed it - I stopped having dreams about being around those kinds of folks. In fact, I found myself having a much broader variety of experiences that included some pretty amazing things! 

Suddenly my thoughts became far more important than they used to be. And I guess I finally, really accepted that I am “the captain of my own ship” when it comes to what kinds of thoughts I have. If I’m after happiness in the physical or subtle worlds, then I need to go to where I want to be - with my mind. Simple as that.