Are You Dreaming?

Right now - this very moment - how do you know you are awake?

We spend nearly a third of our lives asleep - that is decades inside dream world. And yet, most people drift through those vast inner territories like sleepwalkers on autopilot, barely aware they have crossed into another realm. Why even after the most intense and vivid dreams we still lack metacognition? We seem to be able to bridge this gap only with lucid dreaming which comprises cognitive features of both waking life and dream which offers increased coherence in frontal region, access to memory and conscious control over the contents of the dream (Glattfelder, 2019).

How important is the bridging of this gap? What if dreams are not just noise and processing of the emotions? What if they are meaningful, intelligent, and alive signals?

Science tells us that dreaming, particularly during REM sleep, is a neurologically rich state where memory is processed, emotions are regulated, and creative problem-solving occurs. Lucid dreaming - when you become aware that you are dreaming - activates the prefrontal cortex, the same part of the brain associated with logic, reflection, and self-awareness. In those moments, the dreaming mind lights up with a quality that resembles wakefulness.

Lucid dreaming is not just a poetic idea or mystical anecdote - it is a scientifically validated state of consciousness. In laboratory settings, researchers have confirmed that individuals can become self-aware during REM sleep and communicate from within their dreams using pre-agreed eye movements (LaBerge, 1985). Neuroimaging studies have shown that during lucid dreaming, there is heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex - the area of the brain responsible for logic, reflection, and self-awareness - suggesting a hybrid state between waking and dreaming (Dresler et al., 2012). Beyond its fascinating neurology, lucid dreaming has demonstrated significant potential for healing and transformation. Clinical applications include treating nightmares, particularly in PTSD, by allowing individuals to confront and alter distressing dream content (Spoormaker & van den Bout, 2006).

Jungian psychology, too, has long emphasised the symbolic power of dreams as messages from the unconscious (Jung, 1964), a view now echoed in emerging scientific paradigms. He saw dreams not as meaningless psychic leftovers, but as direct communications from the unconscious, expressed in the ancient language of symbol and metaphor. He called dreams ‘the royal road to the unconscious’ and taught that within them lie keys to the soul’s unfolding. Glattfelder (2019) proposes that consciousness and reality may be rooted in information itself, a perspective that revalidates symbolic and archetypal modes of understanding as sophisticated, rather than archaic. Together, these insights suggest that dreams - especially lucid ones - are not mere illusions of sleep but doorways to deeper cognitive and spiritual realms.

Across the world, many cultures for centuries have treated dreams not as idle fantasies but as vital sources of guidance, healing, and connection to the sacred. In Indigenous Australian traditions, the Dreamtime is a foundational cosmology where ancestral beings shaped the land and continue to communicate through dreams. Among the Iroquois and other Native American nations, dreams were seen as messages from the spirit world, often guiding decisions and shaping personal destiny. In ancient Egypt, dreams were portals to divine realms, with temples dedicated to dream incubation. Tibetan Buddhists developed detailed practices for dream yoga, using lucid dreaming as a path to spiritual awakening. These dream cultures recognised something the modern West has largely forgotten that dreams are not just stories we tell ourselves in sleep but encounters with deeper layers of reality, the symbolic world being the foundation of reality itself. According to shamanic traditions in many indigenous cultures, dreams are not considered to be personal hallucinations - they are shared spaces, places of power, guidance, and healing, that can bring a vision, a warning or a calling.

In the modern West, we have abandoned the entire way of knowing - the symbolic mode of cognition. The symbolic mode of cognition is a way of understanding rooted in images, metaphors and archetypes rather than using analytical or linear reasoning. It reflects a pre-modern and often non-Western approach to meaning, where symbols function as bridges between the seen and unseen, the conscious and unconscious. In this mode, a dream, a myth, or a piece of art is not merely interpreted for surface content but engaged as a living expression of deeper truths. Carl Jung emphasised this symbolic faculty as essential to individuation and psychological integration.

In contrast, modern Western thought has abandoned this mode in favour of rationalism and materialism. Yet thinkers like Glattfelder (2019) argue that a new scientific worldview rooted in information theory and complexity may once again open the door to symbolic insight. By exploring consciousness, emergence, and reality as fundamentally informational, Glattfelder suggests a framework in which the symbolic regains its power as a mode of knowing instead of believing. Symbols are not primitive remnants but sophisticated tools for navigating the layered, meaning-rich nature of reality itself (Glattfelder, 2019; Glattfelder, 2025)

Carlos Castaneda echoed this when he wrote of dreaming as a discipline. In his apprenticeship with the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan, Castaneda was taught that dreams were not internal hallucinations, but gateways to alternate realities governed by their own laws (The Art of Dreaming, 1993). Lucid dreaming, in this context, was a way of training perception, sharpening the senses, and loosening the grip of the conditioned mind. To become lucid, it was a step toward freedom, an act of perception that could change your relationship to both inner and outer worlds. Castaneda described ‘dreaming attention’ as a specific kind of focus, one that could stabilise awareness in the dream world and allow the dreamer to explore it as if it were just as real as waking life. He proposed that reality itself is not fixed but assembled by perception - and that by shifting that perception, one could enter other domains of being (The Active Side of Infinity, 1998). Whether taken as literal truth or powerful metaphor, Castaneda’s dreamwork points toward a deeper insight - that waking and dreaming are not separate worlds, but an extension of consciousness shaped by attention, meaning, and will.

While lucid dreaming has gained attention in scientific and psychological circles, there is another equally rich tradition known as active dreaming, championed by dream explorer and author Robert Moss. Unlike lucid dreaming that concentrates on awareness in a dream, active dreaming emphasises an intentional relationship with dreams both during sleep and in waking life. It blends ancient shamanic practices with modern consciousness work, treating dreams not as isolated nighttime experiences but as ongoing dialogues with the soul, ancestors, or guiding presences (Moss, 2011). In active dreaming, one does not need to ‘control’ the dream but rather engage with it, through journaling, re-entry (consciously reimagining or returning to a dream) and shared dreamwork with others. Whereas lucid dreaming often focuses on awareness within the dream, active dreaming focuses on bringing the dream’s wisdom into waking life, treating every symbol, encounter, and emotion as part of a living conversation with the deeper self. In this way, affirming the dream world as meaningful, multidimensional, and participatory.

So, what if dreams are not escapes, but messages? Maps? Mirrors? What if your deeper self - or something even more ancient - is always reaching out to you through image, story, and symbol? What happens if you connect with your dream self and start merging the realities into one? By letting those worlds interweave with one another, drawing insights from the symbols, recognising them as powerful archetypes and allowing yourself to be guided by your own subconscious? Especially in times when so many of us feel lack guidance and clarity this could offer a new way of approaching difficulties, uncertain times and navigating through the world in the search of your true self.

Have you ever dreamed of someone you didn’t recognise and somehow felt they were real? What if they were? What if dreams are not always private too and sometimes shared, woven beneath waking life?

Reawakening of the symbolic imagination that modern culture has let slip away is something that might be very much needed and helpful for a modern man. Not only for mental health or better trauma integration but also for a better connection with oneself and the surrounding world which comes only from understanding the unseen forces mystics for so long have been talking about. This symbolic way of seeing - through dreams, images, stories and archetypes - was once central to a man and his spiritual approach on life… until it has been pushed out by a modern overly scientific mind. And now I am being hopeful we are opening our minds and hearts once again and with a growing curiosity start questioning the nature of mind and reality.

And maybe tonight, you will notice something. You will see your hands, you will ask the question, and you will know - you are dreaming.

Please join the community channel Meet People from Your Dreams, a space for all Patreon members to join to document and compare dream experiences. Are there common places? Familiar faces? Recurring symbols? Could there be a collective dreamscape, something we all can tap into?

References

Castaneda, C. (1993). The Art of Dreaming. HarperCollins.

Castaneda, C. (1998). The Active Side of Infinity. HarperCollins.

Dresler, M., Wehrle, R., Spoormaker, V. I., Koch, S. P., Holsboer, F., Steiger, A., Czisch, M. (2012). Neural correlates of dream lucidity obtained from contrasting lucid versus non-lucid REM sleep: A combined EEG/fMRI case study. Sleep, 35(7), 1017–1020. https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.1974

Glattfelder, J. B. (2019). Information—Consciousness—Reality: How a new understanding of the universe can help answer age-old questions of existence. Springer.

Glattfelder, J. B. (2025). The Sapient Cosmos: What a modern-day synthesis of science and philosophy teaches us about the emergence of information, consciousness, and meaning. Essentia Books.

Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and His Symbols. Dell.

LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid Dreaming. Tarcher.

Moss, R. (2011). Active Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom. New World Library.

Spoormaker, V. I., & van den Bout, J. (2006). Lucid dreaming treatment for nightmares: A pilot study. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 75(6), 389–394. https://doi.org/10.1159/000095446