Dr. Stephen Laberge s The Art Of Lucid Dreaming Essay

-dream ========================== Dreams have always occupied a curious place in human history. Granted, the modern day westerner might look at dreams as simply fantasies, hallucinations, illusions of the mind that rapture us in the night. But throughout history we find no shortage of cultures who have held an interesting relationship to dreams. Countless tribal cultures (such as the Aborigine’s of Australia, for one) found tremendous value in dreams; giving dreams an especially important place in their society and its rituals. And of course Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, the founding thinkers of psychoanalysis, saw dreams as expressing â€Å"the language of the unconscious†; and (for them) it was through dreams that we came to work out our psychological struggles, or confront our most primal impulses. Still others such as Dr. Stephen LaBerge (author of â€Å"The Art of Lucid Dreaming†) see dreams as avenues for our continued conscious development—even when we are sleeping. Lucid dreaming (a term denoted by LaBerge) is the practice of becoming conscious in one’s dreams—without physically waking up from them—enabling one to â€Å"take control† of their dreams. And still others will go so far as to assert some sort of â€Å"paranormal† significance to dreams, at least in cases when (for instance) someone dreams about a relative in trouble, only to find upon wakening that, in real life, they were. ========================== Are they omens? Prophecies? Are they the language of our