Some dreams stay dreams, Some dreams come true!

Thanks to NaS and Kanye West for that title.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about why sleep is so important and why R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) sleep is so crucial to us being able to reset our minds (not brains). For those who don't know, R.E.M. sleep is the time that we dream (and sometimes remember the events taking place). I was prompted by some discussion in an infomercial of all places! But the underlying question was: why is sleep so important?

Here is my theory:

As I have mentioned before, people who follow the Buddhist religion believe that there is just one consciousness. This is God. Brahman is the term they use. It means one, or oneness. They suggest meditation to connect or plug into this consciousness. And they claim that the better you become at accessing Brahman, the more you become a part of the world and lose your individual hang ups, related to socialized culture. The further claim is that this is the only true consciousness, and the only reason we aren't always connected is that our physical bodies and brains are too busy with other stimuli to notice the power and energy flow that they create and are ultimately a part of.

So, I believe that dreams are our minds accessing this ultimate consciousness. This is why we may have friends, family etc in dreams. They have been thinking about us at the same time we were thinking about them and, if we link in at the same times, are likely to find each other on this "higher" (other) plane. I mean, how many times have you had a dream and some time later the EXACT SAME scenario plays out in real life? If you think it, it will come. Ok, that's an oversimplification, but we DO attract the things we think about. So if you have a boss who annoys the shit out of you, and you constantly keep them in your thoughts - they will continue to do so. If you keep thoughts of achieving goals and helping people in your head - eventually you will come to do those things as well.

Basically, when you dream, it is your body's natural way of finding that other plane to make sense of all the other stimuli observed that day and prior to sleep. This is why things from your normal day leak into the part of the brain responsible for dreams. All the neuronal cells network, so sometimes the ones responsible for memory flash and mix with other signals that are more important to your mental recovery from all the outside stimuli.

What do you think?

Graduation

Good morning!

How are you today? It's a beautiful day here in the Lou. A good one for a holiday. Early May is just filled with graduations, holidays and late spring fun.

As the next class of students leaves the ranks of high school, college or professional/graduate school, I think back on the way my education started. It actually happened this morning with my breakfast toast, etc.

The thought stemmed from an inner dialogue I was having with myself about accepting not being "a good Christian" anymore. That led to my contemplating the main themes in Christianity versus my understanding of what is right and "true". What I know to be best is: develop the self; be a steward to all others, in the collective "self". This is known as Brahman in the Hindu religious belief system. I concluded that the overarching themes in institutional Christianity are or are variations of: obey now; reward later.

That blind faith and discouraging of challenges to authority reminded me of the classroom setting. And I'm not sure that its true or not, but I believe the first real "schools" were all religious. So, if that's true, then religion is the institution from which we derive our modern philosophy of classroom teaching. Prior to that, there were many teaching styles such as those used in Ancient Kemet, Greece and Rome.

What really struck me is our Pledge of Allegiance.

It's a statement that I never really thought about until I was in college. That was when I dissected what we were saying. When you do that, you see something more than simply something I couldn't bare to stand and say (especially after we learned about slavery). It is a mind shaping tool - brainwashing - if you will, carried about through rote learning, repetition. Every time that I think of something similar - from the pledge to the arbitrary subjects we learned that we will never use - I get angry! If you don't, then you just don't see it like I do...

Not that there's anything wrong with that :)

However, if you like to see things for the outcomes that they produce, then you see that the things we "learned", more like we were inculcated or indoctrinated with as children, were tools of a government or governments ensuring their power into perpetuity. Like my friend B. Jones says "they found a way to drown it all out... with cobless corn... techno porn". What they're drowning out is not your votes. They're drowning out your independent thought with gobs and gobs of stimuli - from sports and entertainment to prescription and "illegal" drugs. Don't get it twisted, the government brings it here in large quantities. Do you really think Rico from downtown has the cash to fund a large carrier from Mexcio or Columbia, have it hidden from the U.S. military and get it to you for the price that we get it? NO! But I digress...

My disclaimer: I love this country! I love the people in it (for the most part). I just have a problem with the way we let someone else control us, and do whatever they want around the world, when we wouldn't let a friend do anything close to that! So why should we let our government? Especially since we pay them to do their jobs right and with integrity. It's not as simple as that, but I think we could easily take everything back if we just stop feeding into it. Cut off your cable. Get rid of your T.V.! You don't need it! Talk to your family! Read a book. Catch some rays. Grow a garden! Anything but wasting your life watching a tube and working like a drone! Maybe I just have more of a zest for life than most, but I think it may be contagious...

Catch the FEVER! LOL

Anyway... This is more of a rant than a writing of purpose. But like I said. I was angry. Happy Cinco De Mayo! (don't get me started on the irony of us celebrating that one! lol)

Comment if you get the notion!