Informative Dreams

Like most people, I rarely remember my dreams. I don't believe there's anything lost by this. The way I see it, dreams are merely our minds sorting things out through the night. They are background processes. Useless information is tossed out, while more interesting stuff is processed and archived.

Whatever there is of value is put aside in a place where it can be easily accessed. This is why we often find solutions to problems in the mornings, shortly after waking up. It's why we insist on sleeping on it, when faced with a difficult decision. The background processes are excellent problem solvers. They are unconstrained by inhibitions. They do their thing without judgment.

The uninhibited side of dreams allow for a lot of creativity. However, it can also pose a problem for us. Things that we'd rather not think about is processed and put in front of us. When we wake up, we hurry to burry the information in the back of our minds. This can be very bothersome.

Failing to present information plainly, our subconscious present it in memorable dreams instead. What's suppressed is draped in stories that we can deal with without immediately burying it, and it is this kind of dreams that we recall without much effort. The dreams we fail to remember are forgotten because the information in them is readily accepted by us. It's only the dreams that we do remember that contain suppressed information.

I'm thinking about this today because I've had two informative dreams over the two last nights. The first one was a vivid presentation of something I'm well aware of. However, it's not something I'm going to share in a blog. Some things are best left in silence, and that dream was an example of that. But the dream I had this morning was of a far less personal character. It contained a prediction related to the latest rumblings between the US and Russia.

I was onboard a large military ship recently modified to look like a shark. Sitting in a bus traveling up a long corridor, I saw Russian soldiers rapidly moving into position. However, I didn't care about this at all. I went to my room at the end of the ship. Sitting there, a Russian soldier appeared in the doorway with his gun at the ready. It didn't scare me one bit. I told him I was unarmed and that I wasn't about to put up a fight. He left without any fuss, and I thought to myself: "where's the clown brigade?"

I'm not sure why this was presented to me in a dream. The message seems obvious and uncontroversial: I'm not going to put my life at stake to support the clown brigade. Russia will do it's thing with little to no resistance. It will be like Crimea all over again. All of a sudden, there will be Russian soldiers everywhere. No shots will be fired. Another chunk of Ukraine will fall under Russian control, and nobody will care one bit. Not even the average Ukrainian will be much fussed about the episode.

Mark Esper with Jens Stoltenberg

By U.S. Secretary of Defense - 200212-D-AP390-6107, CC BY 2.0, Link