What is a dream to you?

A dream to me is a lot of different variations. A dream could be a vision of the future that could pertain to your life, it could be prophetic, it could be the minds way of showing what we are missing or learning in our lives. A dream could also be an escape from the every day mundane life. You must ask yourself what is this dream, how does this dream apply to my daily life and what can I learn from it.

may the Force be with you

I guess dreaming is awareness of some sleep function which can associate to short term memory enough to feedback on itself as an 'observer' for some type of conscious experience to form.

Dreaming is most commonly associated with REM sleep but I'm not sure if it's the only time we dream... perhaps just the most frequent experience of it. It seem's that Stage 4 sleep has some sort of cerebral cortex maintenance activity (synchronized waves) perhaps, which might be the/an important part of sleep. For me I think this is represented by the ocean in dreams.

After that Stage 4 sleep, it looks like we transition back towards waking status, but it stops short (if allowed) and enters that REM stage instead before repeating the cycle anew. I think REM sleep is almost like a waiting room between maintenance cycles, and from there dreams are most easily able to occur.

So for me its just a chance to experience the power of the subconscious which during woken life is busy with proprioception and understanding the environment and activities. I'd guess the content is mostly random, but built from various emotional dispositions and established memories. There might be some sub-processing which occurs under normal waking conditions for memory retention as well (such as short term memory being processed into longer term memories) which might become available as often the preceding day's memories seem to influence my dreams.

I like to take things a step further if I get the chance by experimenting with lucid dreaming and looking for premonition's but that is just part of how I try to get focus in there more then anything else.

Some other theories are;

• Rehearse less common behaviors that are not often activated in waking states.
• Erase unwanted non-adaptive memories.
• Consolidate learning and memory.

Check out PGO waves and Activation Synthesis Theory which might be of interest.

I used to keep a dream journal because of how often I experienced deja vu...to me some dreams are prophetic, some are subconscious enlightenment, some are symbolic, some are simply fantasy...

In my experience, not all dreams are the same kind of thing.

Most of my dreams that I can recall are of one of two types. Some dreams are clearly my mind churning over some issue from daytime awareness in what we commonly call "real life". I see familiar people, settings, and events, though they're often modified in a creative way that may or may not seem rational. I rarely acquire any conscious sense that these dreams help me in a tangible way, but in my inner world, so inadequately understood, it may be that they are vital.

The other type are dreams that seem to my waking mind to be just nonsense. Early in life they often had to do with monsters of my own creation; later, they might depict a strange party, an odd conversation, a trip through an airport, or a shopping excursion. They generally involve people and places that have never been part of my waking life, though now and again in periods of anxiety I have dreamt of being chased - so at least my own action in the dream has some relationship to my outer life.

However, there have been a few dreams that are different than these. There is usually a space of years between them, but they deliver a clear message regarding some issue of high impact on my life. I always emerge from these dreams with the sense that a consciousness other than my own - a guide, a teacher, my Higher Self, or the Force - has played a major role in stagecrafting the dream, and that the message within it is a gift. I really like this kind.

Thanks for the question! It was a nice one to reflect upon.

Dreams are very important to me, besides doing mental maintaince while I rest it's the best state of mind and body that opens my door to the cosmos.

A very interesting research paper on Alpha rythmes, sleep and dreaming. Some really good bits in there if you can get past the boring bits - like how dreams seem able to happen at all stages of sleep regardless of REM activity or inactivity. I'd recommend having a read if your interested in how dreams and awareness might operate in the brain;

Its an open full text so everyone should be able to access it; Alpha reactivity to first names differs in subjects with high and low dream recall frequency @ Frontiers

Front. Psychol., 13 August 2013 wrote: Dreaming remains one of the great mysteries of human cognition. Just after waking up in the morning nearly everyone has experienced some bizarre representations from the night before. They are sometimes insightful and can result in great discoveries at the scientific level or at the personal level.

However, despite recent advances dreaming remains a poorly understood cognitive ability. Indeed, very little is known about the psychological mechanisms constraining dream content and about the cerebral mechanisms involved in the production and encoding of the oneiric representations.