Daydreaming – Crossing Gates of Eyes & Mind

Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn:
Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn:
True visions through transparent horn arise,
Through polished ivory pass deluding lies.

- VIRGIL

Sweet Dreams!

It is wonderful word. Thank god if your mind is stayed in creating wonderful and beautiful things needed for the world. Otherwise it will just get stay to destroy them. There is nobody’s fault. Controlling mind has been always difficult task. Neglecting evil never helps. Accept it and convert evil to virtue.

We all see dreams. What kind of dreams? Good. Great. What else? Bad. But we hide them. Self-realization is however enough for bad dreaming. Were you afraid of bad dream? The child’s dream of enjoying sex with the girl was probably not so threatening or thrilling. The child just tried to reach his imaginations. What he knows or what he believes to know. Due to last night dream, he was more adroit to see in day. He assumed the classmate to be the girl he saw last night. He just started daydreaming. More and more crossing levels of imaginations by further reading or searching realities. The child’s father happened to die in one car accident. This accident changes his all thoughts. Family expects him to be intelligent enough to carry over responsibilities. As he is the elder anyway, he needs to understand what care is. With great responsibilities learning how work is done, the child starts dreaming of earning quite enough to serve his family. The dreams cross over all the tall and high buildings. The good things happened in his life and he proved himself by being great business achievements. What went wrong and what went right in this story?

According to Freud "Every single fantasy or dreaming is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality". Time, sex and position categorize daydreaming or fantasy. Freud classified unsatisfied wishes in two categories.

One is the ambition that put the person on a pedestal. It adds to individual’s personality.
The other is erotic wish.

Fantasies of the individual are closely related to time – present, past and future. Daydreaming of a boy may be to fly in the sky just like a bird. Although he understands difference of bird and aircraft, he wants to fly just like a bird. Sometime dreaming of child comes from stories he reads. Being Super-Man or Batman is most common and natural. But being Dracula is quite uncommon where he enjoys keeling women. These wishes either good or bad are transformed in acts. In young age, just instead of Dracula he finds himself and the act of keeling becomes more threatening or thrilling. Nice guy understands philosophies and religion. Following religion, he understands god and believe in doing good for poor and needy persons. However Freud argues that any dreaming is result of non-fulfillment of something thought. I could not talk to my classmate but I dreamed her a lot. Because of my shy nature, I could not do. Today I am quite capable. But my dreams are changed totally. What you miss to do is what you likely to dream. Dream is just last impression of your failure on your mind.

A fantasy floats between past and the future. Every fantasy is linked up with some current consciousness in the present. From the present it mosey back to the memory of an early experiences belonging to childhood.

Freud further comments that when fantasies become too predominant, the daydreamer becomes prone to neurosis or psychosis. Our dreams at night are nothing but fantasies. Due to social constrain we could not complete our wishes. Wishes are repressed and pushed into unconsciousness. In nights these wishes get activated during sleep. That’s what science or psychology says.

Few of us want to consider daydreaming as imagination. Imagination is not daydreaming or wishful thinking. We need to systemize imagination with fact. Daydreaming is often a breakout from the opportunities and challenges of daily life. We are using imagination constructively where as daydreaming is likely to be so.

William James considered daydream as one of the aspects of consciousness in theory of "stream of thought" (1890) or "stream of consciousness" (1892). "Daydreams are one predominant aspect of our stream of consciousness, in which we become absorbed in fantasies/narratives, and during which we engage in relatively little metacognition."

Singer & Antrobus through "The Imaginal Process Inventory (IPI)" found 3 factors characterizing different daydreaming styles in 1972.

• Positive-Vivid
• Guilty-Dysphoric
• Anxious-Distractible

According to Singer & Antrobus "Night dreams of positive-vivid daydreamers showed more positive emotionality and less bizarreness than did either guilty-dysphoric or anxious-distractible types. Nightmares never occurred among the positive-vivid daydreamers; were frequent for the anxious-distractible daydreamers. Positive-vivid daydreamers generate visual images that are so vivid that they interfere with the detection of dim visual signals. Sexual daydreams show themes consistent with daydreaming style (pleasure, guilt, or anxiety)."

Mueller and Dyer identified functions of daydreaming in quite positive way in 1985.

1. Daydreaming supports planning for the future.
2. Daydreaming supports learning from successes and failures.
3. Daydreaming supports processes of creativity.
4. Daydreaming supports emotion regulation.

This is anyway game of two gates. We all pass from this process. It is just being wondering rather being optimist or pessimist for two gates. If I need to follow, I would say similar to Steven Wright.

"I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering".