Dreams and Dreaming

“Dreams! The royal road to Integration” Fritz Perls. 

Dreams and Dreaming Part 1: If we live for sixty years, we will have been asleep for twenty as we spend a third of our life in sleep. During this sleep state, we dream for many hours, not just one dream per night! If we experience any kind of problem, we are often advised to ‘sleep on it’ as this is a recognized way of accessing wisdom that not available to us throughout the day.

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Druids, Native Americans and almost every other culture have used dreams for gaining wisdom. Sigmund Freud said the examination of dreams is the “royal road” to self discovery.

Interesting dreams have been recorded throughout all time. Sir Christopher Wren dreamt that a woman gave him dates to eat and when he bought some the next day, it cured him of his crippling colic condition. As a child, Lady Seymour dreamt of nine finches in a nest. When she married the Earl of Winchelsea, whose name was Finch, she had nine children. Before the Coronation of King Edward VII, the Duke of Portland had a dream that the state coach was stuck under Coronation Arch. When measured, the coach was indeed too large. Otto Loewi dreamt he won the Nobel Prize before it was awarded to him.