Day-dreaming about Dreams

I don't usually write on a Wednesday, because it's midweek and probably the busiest time of the week. But today is a public holiday, and one of those rare ones that I happen not to be working. I have the whole day to myself and I thought, why not write my blog article for this week?

I had lunch here at a neighbourhood cafe. It is not one of those coffee chain outlets which are usually packed with people on weekends and public holidays; this one is tucked at a quiet corner of the business area. It is a comfortable place for me to day-dream, read, write and journal. And that's my idea of relaxation. 

I--all of us as a matter of fact--dream every night. The onset of REM sleep is when the movie in our head starts playing. What are dreams? There are of course many theories for it, which one can easily read on the Net. I'm not interested to expound them here. 

I don't think there's that much of a mystery about dreaming. As the conscious part of the mind turns off, residual background processing continues. Cut off from sensory input, neurons in our brains will still fire, if not randomly, as a consequence and momentum of on-going thoughts. 

The pattern of firing reflects the tendencies and state of our mind leading up to the point when we fall asleep--very much like how the surface of the water in the bathtub will still move and ripple after the tap has been turned of. Basically, echoes of your waking hours' neuronal activities. 

These firings are not a driven primarily by the ego or the conscious mind, as in during waking hours because these parts of the mind are already turned off during sleep. So the firings are 'free' in a sense that they have the opportunity, to find their equilibrium state.

That's why sleep is important and sometimes problems can find its solutions during sleep. These residual processing is the brain working at its most relaxed state, without the distorting influence of the conscious mind, but only their echoes reverberate throughout the dream state. That is why our hopes, fears and anxieties manifest themselves in dreams too.

But why do dreams always seem slightly incoherent and sometimes fantastical? Any pattern of neuronal firing can be interpreted by the left brain as a 'story'. It is always trying to cohere and connect the dots. But the firings of neurons during the dream process are not triggered by input from the sensory world. They are simply residual energy, trying to find its stable state. 

The left brain will just do its job, trying to weave a logical story arc from these free-flowing signals, because, as I've mentioned elsewhere before, stories are the basic data structures of the mind. It's like a dynamic Rorschach inkblot, manifesting familiar faces and figures from our real-life, interacting in a way, which our left-brain, on a best effort basis, deemed 'logical'. It's our natural ability for pareidolia and apophenia.

That's what I think dreams really are. One can interpret dreams, because dreams are the result of the 'prompt engineering' of events from our waking state. Through our dreams, we get an ideal of the subconscious 'language models' that drive our waking minds. So dream on and make dreams the portal into the inner workings of your mind.