"All life is a dream and dreams are dreams." affirmed the playwright Calderón de la Barca. Sleep has always been one of the great enigmas of the human being. In primitive traditions it was a vehicle for connecting with the ancestors and in a trance state, it was used for healing. In ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt, dreams guided the decisions of the emperor, in the form of an oracle and acted as a door or expression of the spiritual. In the Mediterranean, both Morpheus, Hippocrates and Piarist healed through dreams.
Today, one of the biggest illnesses we suffer from is lack of sleep, as a consequence of states of anxiety or the fast-paced life we lead. That is why sleep hygiene is basic for all of us. You have to sleep enough hours and with quality sleep. For this, a prior mental cleansing is necessary, avoiding stimulants, copious dinners, exercising or getting hooked on screens before going to sleep.
Friedrich Nietzsche considered that without the dream we would not have been prompted to an analysis of the world and the mythologist Joseph Campbell said that dreams are our myths or particular narratives. As we know, Freud was the first to study dreams, postulating that they are the expression of our repressed desires. His theories may be outdated, but the dream remains a mainstay of who we are.
We spend half the time in bed and dreaming can either be a great luxury or a paramount necessity. Experts such as the professor of psychiatry Javier García Campayo, not only recommend dreaming, but doing it lucidly (Lucid Dreams, Kairós, 2022). A lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer is aware of the fact that she is dreaming and can therefore often consciously influence the content of the dream. In them we can reach a high degree of consciousness from which to affect our daily life.
The benefits of lucid dreams go through sleeping better or having fun flying or having sex. We can also take the opportunity to rehearse something we are working on, such as a conference, an artistic performance or a sports practice. Likewise, it is possible to solve problems, influence a recurring nightmare or transcend a duel. Psychologically, a lucid dream would allow us to know aspects denied by our unconscious and inquire about the shadow that accompanies us.
Spiritually, a lucid dream is used to prepare us for death, have premonitions or meditate on our existence. Alexander the Great dreamed that Tire would be his and it came true, just as the priestesses of the Delphi oracle prophesied the history of all of Greece.
Dreams contain a great deal of information about our psyche and the realm of the unconscious. Shakespeare said that we are made of the same stuff that dreams are woven from. If we are capable of directing dreams from a lucid state, we can create the movie of our lives.
Another way of understanding it is how most oriental traditions do that consider reality itself as a dream called Maya. Certainly, considering the world as a dream is a way of reducing detachment from everything that happens in it and downplaying our ego or main character.
If we want to have lucid dreams and daydream, the first thing is to improve our sleep hygiene and follow a schedule, even creating a ritual, such as a bath, to relax before going to sleep. From here, we must plant the intention to achieve a lucid dream. Lucidity is most likely in a short sleep, so naps are the best times to have them.
The Sufi mystic Khalil Gibran said “trust in dreams, since in them the door to eternity is hidden”.
