In a way, we are always dreaming… and this is a good thing.
Proponents of mindfulness meditation call it our monkey mind: the crazy, undisciplined way our thoughts jump around when we allow our mind to wander freely. It used to be thought that when we were not focusing our minds on something specific, our brains simply idled there, switched off. Similarly, it used to be thought that, with the exception of the occasional dream, our minds were largely silent while we slept. In fact, we are always dreaming.
Under the surface of waking thought, and throughout the entire night (not just in REM sleep), our brains are dreaming… and this is a good thing. There is a common misconception that dreaming is a nonsensical activity that serves no useful purpose. But as we discover more about the nature of our brains, we find that dreaming is implicated in the crucial tasks of sorting through the massive onslaught of information we take in each day, making meaning of it, recording what’s important in such a way that we can access it when needed, and at the same time, softening the emotional charge associated with life’s most impactful events. And if that’s not enough, dreams do all this with creativity and economy.
What might be even more surprising is that these dream-like activities happen during the day as well as at night. Neuroimaging now enables us to watch the brain in action, and in doing so, brain researchers discovered a surprising thing. For their experiments, brain researchers generally ask their participants to perform a task or think about something specific, and then see which areas of the brain light up. What researchers began to notice is that in between specific tasks, the brain does not go dark and silent – a grouping of other areas of the brain light up in a fairly predictable pattern. This has become known as the default mode network (DMN).
For proponents of mindfulness, the DMN is to be avoided in favor of present moment attention. The DMN can be associated with rumination and depression so we best not let our mind wander unchecked. In modern times, many of us curtail the neural wanderlust by keeping our minds very busy. Much of the time we might historically have spent mind-wandering is now taken up with screen time. Even while walking in the forest or going on a long drive, many of us will plug into a podcast rather than allow our minds to roam as freely as our bodies. In this quest for constant productivity and focus, however, much is lost.
In their recent book, When Brains Dream, Tony Zadra and Robert Stickgold suggest the activities of the DMN are important for priming the brain for dreaming. When our brains get a break, our thoughts wander along loosely associative paths scanning thoughts, experiences and memories; they seem to be queuing up what we will dream about later. When awake and busy, we are taking information in at such a rate that we don’t have the mind space to sort and make meaning of it all. We need to do this when we have down time, so our dreams can then do their job of integrating important new information into our associative memory networks. If we don’t allow our mind enough time to wander, it will do so as soon as we lay down to sleep at night. Zadra and Stickgold suggest that this might explain those times when our minds can’t shut down for the night, and instead zigzag their away through a wide array of loosely connected thoughts before finally allowing us to drift off to sleep.
We can catch hold of these pre-dreaming processes during the day. In many ways they are indistinguishable from nocturnal dreams. In one experiment, people were shown texts from dreams and from daydreams, and if the latter were emotionally-toned, they were indistinguishable from regular dreams. The Jungian analyst Arnold Mindell espoused the idea that we are always dreaming, and that we can catch hold of the dreaming through indirect little clues he charmingly called flirts. He developed process work as a way to become aware of the flow of dreaming while awake. We receive subtle cues all the time, often through our bodies, in the form of sensations, hunches, flickers of visions and intuition. Mindell does not view the dreams in sleep and waking as distinct from each other, except with respect to the ego, which is much more in charge during waking hours. During dreaming, all figures seem to have equal importance, leading Mindell to call our dreammaker “deeply democratic.”
In a recent (December 2020) edition of the online journal Aeon, Rubin Naiman wrote a beautiful essay lamenting the loss in our modern world of REM/dreamtime. He also believes that we are always dreaming, and offers a perfect celestial metaphor for this: “Although we believe dreams are like stars that emerge only at night, we know that stars are always present, even when occluded by daylight. Likewise, dreams are always present as an undercurrent in consciousness, even when obscured by ordinary waking. Jung referred to this undercurrent as the waking dream. In contrast to daydreams, which are about escaping current experiences, the waking dream calls us more deeply into those experiences and undercurrents.”
Naiman suggests we can access the waking dream world through many avenues, including art, spiritual practices, by lingering at the border of waking and sleep, and via active imagination in Jungian therapy. Naiman concludes his essay with the beautiful notion that dreaming can infuse the way we live our lives and lead us to our authentic selves. “Dreaming, if you’re so minded, can become a way of life, or at least a regular practice. The waking dream is about using our dream eyes, the ones we see with in REM/dreams, in broad daylight. It can loosen the grip of wake centrism, and offer glimpses of the world behind the world. In this way, it reveals a deeper sense of who we are, tapping into the mythic backstory of our lives.”
So next time you settle onto your cushion to become mindful, try cultivating a little mindlessness instead. Allow the mind’s default mode to take over, and let it gambol and play as it naturally will. Sink down below the shiny surface of things and dive into the undercurrent that enriches and underlies your life. Be sure to slip below the regular level of thought where, let loose, the inner critic will want to take over and berate you for being lazy and unproductive. Rest assured that doing ‘nothing’ may be the most important thing for your mind and body in that moment.
