Dream Disturbances

Nothing could be madder, more irresponsible, more dangerous than this guidance of men by dreams. - George Santayana Our dreams disturb us because they refuse to pander to our fondest notions of ourselves. The closer one looks, the more they seem to insist upon a challenging proposition: You must live truthfully. Right now. And always. Few forces in life present, with an equal sense of inevitability, the bare- knuckle facts of who we are, and the demands of what we might become. - Marc Ian Barasch, Healing Dreams It is impracticable, however, to keep our sleep free from stimuli; they impinge upon the sleeper from all sides - like the germs of life which Mephistopheles complained - from without and from within and even from parts of his body which are quite unnoticed in waking life. Thus sleep is disturbed; first one corner of the mind is shaken into wakefulness and then another; the mind functions for a brief moment with its awakened portion and is then glad to fall asleep once more. Dreams are a reaction to the disturbance of sleep brought about by a stimulus - a reaction, incidentally, which is quite superfluous.