The emotion in your dreams is the key. Not what you see, or even the specifics you remember after waking, but what you feel. Emotions are the common thread between the waking and the sleeping worlds. When I write about dreams, even in HFB which is for a contemporary romance audience, I keep the dream theory as real life as possible. Which means crafting a story that shows how powerful the mind can be as it leads us through the work we need to do.
Unlike my heroine, your dreams likely won’t safe your life–or possibly get you killed. But they can show you a path you’ve been avoiding, or another you might otherwise stay consciously unaware of until it’s too late. Our dreaming minds are always talking to us about things we need to see. LISTEN to your dreams, folks. Here’s a little bit more about how…
Dreams are emotion come to life. Longing and disappointments and fear and hope and anxiety and excitement…and all of that is all of who we are, in our waking an sleeping worlds.
Think about it–what’s the one dream you can remember most? Why is that dream so easy for you to recall, when others have slipped away? Was it frightening? Special and supremely happy? Were you seeing someone again for the first time in a long time, or travelling somewhere meaningful, or facing your sworn enemy or struggling through your worst nightmare come true, etc.?
All of that is about the emotion still lingering, and bout how it was still scaring or thrilling you when you woke.
It’s been largely accepted by scientists that dreams are a method for us to process emotional information (among other things). Some go so far as to suggest you write a dream report immediately upon waking–and that you focus on feelings and emotions first, before getting to the lingering visible sights and symbols that remain.
The most common emotion experienced during a dream?
Fear.
Does this mean we’re being threatened by either the sleeping or the waking world. Not at all. (more…)
