Dreaming of Someone from our Past

Have you ever thought why people we haven't seen, thought about or even remembered from our past suddenly pops up in our dreams? Why do we dream of old boyfriends, friends or grade school teachers that we have not thought about for years.

I for one have dreamed about my ex-boyfriend back when I was in college, the weirdest thing is he was not even my serious boyfriend. LOL. He was just a fling or someone I used to get attracted with. We did not share a close and deep relationship and I haven't thought about him for years, swear. It was weird as it was as if we shared a deep love for each other in my dream. He wanted to win me back and I was on tears being touched by what he has shown and thought it was real. But then the alarm clocked rang and I opened my eyes. It's already morning. What was that all about?

If I would interpret that, I would say that humans as we are , we have the soul and spirit, it might be something that signals psychological reaching out with that person. However, there are some psychological explanations as to why we have such dreams.

Dreams are curious, nebulous phenomena and humans have been trying to make sense of them since we first became aware of ourselves. Great minds from the Hebrew Joseph to Carl Jung have tried to crack the dream code, yet most of us still wake up thinking, “What did that all mean?”

Dream interpretation can offer some clues as to why certain elements and people find their ways into our dreams, but to really crack the code takes some work and thought.

Our unconscious mind never sleeps. According to Freud, our conscious minds need to disconnect from all stimuli, but we also need to maintain some level of awareness so that we can wake up again. To make sure that happens, while we sleep, our minds channel thoughts and needs into the unconscious brain in the form of dreams. The language of the unconscious is symbolic rather than literal and therefore, so is the content of the dreams it produces. Freud referred to the images and elements that appear in dreams as “manifest content” that represents and alludes to a deeper personal meaning, or “latent content,” to the dreamer. In other words, every part of a dream refers to some other thought or situation, but this connection can only be understood by the dreamer.

There are no random dreams. According to Freud, then, there is no such thing as a random element in a dream, only elements whose relevance we don’t quite understand. In fact, most of what we see and experience in our dreams is obscure to our waking minds. We won’t have seen or thought about someone in ages, and then suddenly he’ll appear as a central figure in a dream, or someone in our peripheral awareness will come to the fore at a seemingly arbitrary time.

Dreams work similarly to literature, art, and music in the way they connect our minds and feelings. Both dreams and art allow us to safely see the sights experiences by approaching them through symbols. They use what we do know to help us understand what we don’t. Art utilizes images, literature applies similes and metaphors, and dreams use elements from our everyday lives to guide our minds through difficult and emotional concepts. It’s alright to dream like this. We can still sleep anyway. Though dreaming of people we haven’t thought of in years may seem like just a coincidence of the brain at the time, such accidental elements are really apparent manifestations of more deep-seeded matters.

With that, I need to sit back and think clearly and associate my dream in reality as to what it represents.



with Love,