"A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes...?"

Link: Once Upon a Dream

I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream
I know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
And I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream

But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once
The way you did once upon a dream

I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream
I know you, that gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
And I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream

Link: A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you're fast asleep
In dreams you will lose your heartache
Whatever you wish for you keep

Have faith in your dreams and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling through
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
the dream that you wish will come true

A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you're feeling small
Alone in the night you whisper

Thinking no one can hear you at all
You wake with the morning sunlight
To find fortune that is smiling on you

Don't let your heart be filled with sorrow
For all you know tomorrow
The dream that you wish will come true

When you can dream then you can start
A dream is a wish you make with your heart
When you can dream then you can start
A dream is a wish you make with your heart

A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you're fast asleep
In dreams you will loose your heartache
Whatever you wish for you keep

You wake with the morning sunlight
To find fortune that is smiling on you
Don't let your heart be filled with sorrow
For all you know tomorrow

The dream that you wish will come true
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
The dream that you wish will come true

When you can dream then you can start
A dream is a wish you make with your heart
When you can dream then you can start
A dream is a wish you make with your heart

When you can dream then you can start
A dream is a wish you make with your heart

I have come to the conclusion that my mind wishes to sleep during the day, and wake up once my eyes shut and I fall asleep. I do not feel I have slept, and truly rested, in an extremely long time. I have spent time pondering why I have become so tired during my waking hours, and it has occurred to me that I am tired because I am processing so much in my dreams. My dreams are intensely vivid. The next day I usually can describe them in vast detail. I know I experience lucid dreaming on a regular occasion. While there has been some skepticism throughout history of the realities of lucid dreaming, in my personal experience, I find no other way to describe the majority dreams as anything but lucid.

"Paul Tholey, an oneirologist and Gestalt theorist laid the epistemological basis for the research of lucid dreams. His work laid the foreground for further researchers to categorize what a lucid dream is. Tholey (1980, 1981) defined seven different conditions of clarity that a dream must fulfill in order to be defined as a lucid dream:
Awareness of the dream state (orientation);
Awareness of the capacity to make decisions;
Awareness of memory functions;
Awareness of identity;
Awareness of the dream environment;
Awareness of the meaning of the dream;
Awareness of concentration and focus (the subjective clarity of that state).

For a dream to be lucid as defined by Tholey, it must fulfill all 7 factors together." (1)

I have found myself dreaming about a specific person who I knew during my school years; on an almost nightly basis. This person is a male, and played no known significance in my social or personal life from the moment I began high school, but they did in elementary and middle school. This particular person has been known to take on the characteristics of males who have played an important role in my life when he appears in my dreams. I believe I dream about this person over and over again because I find myself trying to figure out what, if anything, this person symbolizes in my subconscious, therefore he has been on my mind on a regular basis. I do remember as a child yearning for attention and acceptance from this person, and I know that this person's harsh and degrading comments to myself and others effected me deeply. I believe I can conclude that this particular male was the first male to truly hurt me emotionally, and his cruel actions and words toward me unfortunately effected my self-esteem and sense of self-worth. 

My dreams are torturous because they do not let me "forgive and forget." I relive so many experiences in my dreams. Of course, these experiences are typically troublesome. When I dream about one character from my past I tend to have the "the chase" dream. This is a dream where either they are chasing me, or they are being chased by people I once knew. If they are chasing me, I am hardly outrunning them. If they are being chased by people I once knew, I am typically hiding or out maneuvering him the entire dream. The commonality between them is obviously the idea of trying to escape him. 

When I dream about a group of girls I was once friends with, I usually have the dream when I am driving a car and I cannot get the breaks on the car to work. This usually results in me slamming the car into other cars, or structures, and pieces of the car breaking off. Sometimes certain girls are in the car with me, or I drive the "bad breaks car" after dreaming about certain interactions with them. The commonality amongst these dreams is the sense of having no control of where I am going, something blocking my intended destination, or a constant struggle to the end of my journey. Also the idea that there is no "end to the journey" because in the dream the car keeps gliding, with no sense of direction, when I am struggling to make it come to a stop. As I write this, it occurs to me that this is indicative of how my mind works much of the time. My mind keeps going and going, as I struggle to slow my thoughts down and make them stop. I know I have obsessive compulsive aspects to my behavior and mind and a few of these girls, who's friendships I have lost, I think about continually, reliving certain confrontations, and obsessively wondering what they must think of me. 

Lastly, a common dream is not being able to find my husband in times of severe stress, dread, or when I am dreaming about past sinful behavior. I may be able to find signs of him or hear him calling to me, but I can never seem to get to him. This is the dream where I find myself trying to escape the dream by waking up more so than in any other dream. I often start this frustrating search when "villains" of my conscious past pop into my dream. Many times if my abuser pops into my dream, I will not be able to find my husband. There is a common situation I will dream about when I will try to find rescue in my husband, and I am unable to get to him, but it is too personal to write about publicly. One possible interpretation that comes to my mind is that I spent so much of my life "searching" for my husband in men who were "nightmares." I would try to make these men into a man like my husband, but of course it would never work. Another, deeper, interpretation is a spiritual one. I would call out to God on so many painful occasions, but for years did not "find" him. I prayed to hear God speaking into my life, but never quite heard him until I was redeemed. Why my husband is representative of a spiritual aspect to my life? I am unsure. One possible reason for this is that I ignored my spiritual life for so many years in search of a "husband". The search for a husband became my idea of being "saved". Now that I am TRULY saved my The Lord Jesus Christ, is this failed quest truly visible to me because for so long I was blind and in denial of my choices and actions.