Dream When You're Feeling Blue
By Reno Litterio

Quincy — We all day dream, since childhood into our teens, and adult life. Right now, do you still day dream? Why not? Dreaming is such a private mental enterprise and no one knows you’re in that mental state.

You can day dream “at the drop of a hat,” so the saying goes and there’s no preparation or time schedule to meet. Any time or place, we dream about our wishes, our hopes, our past, future and wishing (I’m guessing) that you were on a warm sandy beach instead of here, reading this article.

Our capacity to day dream is only one aspect of the power of our brain. There is another kind of dreaming and it is called dream-sleep or involuntary dreaming. In a sense your body becomes detached or corpse like, but the brain gives you a sensation of freedom beyond reality. A world of intense images with no cohesiveness of action or time.

I visited some friends recently and during the course of our pleasant evening we began talking about dreams and unusual incidents that we had experienced. Our host began with a recent dream in which he found himself in church. While there, he recalled with great intensity, he dropped dead in the aisle. As he was being carried out, he saw a group of people around a pool table laughing and pointing their finger at him. Next, he recalled being on a table, covered in a white sheet. At the foot of the bed stood a very tall man dressed in white and wearing dark glasses. With a deep and reprimanding voice, “You are late, go back to the end of the line.” Startled, he woke up in a frightful state, as the images seemed so real he was not able to fall asleep again. (Put your thinking cap on and try to interpret the meaning)

Problems of sleep had been studied for years, but not until a young scientist observed that the eyeballs of a sleeping child moved under their eyelids. The rapid eye movements, in unison, were back-and-forth. Later it was labeled rapid-eye-movement-sleep, REM sleep. The 1952 observation by the scientist was made in Chicago. In dream sleep all dreams are unpredictable and many are suppressed, volatile thoughts. Dreams, whether they are remembered or not, seem to be indispensable to the psychic balance.

About The Author
Reno J. Litterio is the previous Editor and Publisher of The Constellation Newsletter. Litterio was the co-founder of the Ward 4 Senior Citizens Social Group in Quincy in 1992 and is now chairman and Director of the group. You can reach Mr. Litterio at renowarior@aol.com.