The Nightmare that is Dreaming

Excuse me if you will, for coming to the conclusion, that if you are reading this, then either you dream, or you are frustrated or curious because you do not. This blog is for both groups, though I myself fall into the first category. I have found myself in the last two years learning and understanding a lot more about my dreaming patterns, and times/situations where I might experience nightmares. I am not here to discuss the complexities of the rhinal cortex and hippocampus, though there is much to be learned from the understanding of those; my purpose here is to explore a less scientific, perhaps more philosophical area, that of how dreaming affects us. Psychologists upon psychologists have and are still continuing to study patterns of the brain in dreaming, with particular focus on victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the activity levels in the various lobes of the brain. But that is not my purpose here, I presume neither to possess the intellect to tackle such a nightmare, nor to assume that I am worth listening to in the discussion of such a broad topic, but having been on the receiving end of both dreams and nightmares, I can assume the position of knowing what it feels like, of knowing how I am effected, and how I learnt to distinguish between what is concerning and what is mental porridge, so to speak.

My desire is to produce a three part series on dreaming, the first part examining nightmares; the second, dreams (those REM sleep ilustrations behind our eyes that don't frighten), and finally, why some of us dream and others do not.
The reason for selecting nightmares as the first part, is that I have been a "sufferer" of nightmares (sufferer in relative terms) of nightmares for as long as I can remember, and generally the dreaming that I remember most over the years has been the nightmares.

Hartmann (1984) defined a nightmare as a long, frightening dream that awakens the sleeper, and awakening from a frightening dream has been used as an operational definition of nightmares by others (as found in the article 'Nightmares and Bad Dreams: Their Prevalence and Relationship to Well-Being' by Donderi and Zadra). Interestingly enough, when I read this for the first time, I felt pretty perturbed at the fact that 'awakens' was part of the definition, as it is rare for me that I wake up, unless my nightmare is at about 9am in the morning when I'm more prone to waking up anyway. The thought of psychologists was that the intensity of a bad dream must equate to waking you up to be deemed a "nightmare", but it was found that when the waking criterion is used to distinguish nightmares from bad dreams among participants who experience both bad dreams and nightmares, approximately 45% of bad dreams are found to have emotional intensities equal to or exceeding those of the average nightmare. I have not ever taken part in a psychological study, but I reckon that I would be included in that 45%.

I suppose it would be so easy for me to say anything like that though and not be believed, as dreaming is such a personal thing, something only the dreamer can experience and understand (sometimes not even the latter). But I want to share a couple of my nightmares of the past that have physically effected me, though not necessarily woken me up, in order to illustrate how disturbing to sleep and life it can be. To me, there is a scale of terror, that nightmares produce, not distinguishable upon waking up or remaining fast asleep, but from one to five in terms of reality disturbance. 1 being low reality disturbance, 5 being high disturbance. Examples would be 1-dreaming that you'd found something (that in real life was still lost), 2- dreaming that you were having a conversation with a friend, in the same room, 3- dreaming that you'd broken up with a long term partner or fallen out with a best friend, 4- dreaming that someone close to you had died or tried to hurt you, 5- dreams about physical injury that affect you in reality. I could be tighter with examples it has to be said, but these are some of the examples of dreams I have had and so it easier to explain this way.

Notice that the higher they are rated, the more emotionally concerned they are. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that strong emotion towards something in reality can affect dreams exponentially; however, I have found nightmares (for me at least)all fall within the higher range. 4 and 5 have been the worst for me. Why is that? Mostly because for me, there has been a serious correlation between fear and the comparison or relation to reality that the dream portrays.

Dream 1. When I was 7 years old, I lived in Uganda, in a lovely massive 3 bedroom detached part bungalow, with a garage under the house. The garden was huge and with 2 dogs I used to play with them outside regularly. I had a dream one night that I walked out of my bedroom (which was my bedroom at the time), and screamed so loud that nothing came out of my mouth. I knew that a man was hunting the house and grounds outside to find me, to kill me. I had no idea who he was, or why, but I just knew that he was. I was panicking, trying to think of where I could go, and the next thing, I was running with all the strength in my legs to (what my dream had composed as a combination between the offices in different countries) the office looking desperately around for my parents. People I knew from the ugandan office were there, and they told me that my dad was in a meeting, but mum saw me and ran to me. She said she'd come back to the house with me and stay with me until I was asleep. She sat on my bed, and I was beginning to feel better, but as I looked up at my window, two glowing green eyes appeared at the corner of my window.
The scariest part of the whole thing was that I still lived in that house, still woke up in that room, and for weeks I couldn't look at the bottom right hand corner of my window because I was terrified. It was how close the dream fit into my then-present reality that made it so terrifying. I don't remember having a strange emotional state at the time, only remember the nightmare and the fear. I did wake up from the one, shaking and crying a little.

Dream 2. This was much worse. And I can trace this one to where it may have sprung from. Only last year, the week following the funeral of my grandad, "Bikey". It was a whole week of these terrors when I slept. But I will discuss the one that disturbed me most here. (For the faint of heart, stop reading now, it's pretty horrid). It was short, succinct, and terrifying. The long and short of it was that I was talking to someone, they told me I was dying, and as I looked down at my chest, the left side of my chest was hemorrhaging. I was dying from internal bleeding, and I was watching it kill me. I woke up almost immediately hands holding where the bleeding had been, and crying. After that I was terrified of going back to sleep.

I wanted to embrace insomnia, I felt safer holding my eyes open than to fall in the horror behind my eyes. The most interesting thing is that I never experience these horrors after a scary film or programme, or a violent news programme. It is almost always emotional. I carry the baggage into my sleep and my mind has just got too much to handle because I didn't get rid of it before bed. From a young age I would pray "God, help me to sleep without any bad dreams or nightmares". Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but those times that it didn't now have made me appreciate the importance of unloading whilst I'm awake. The things going through my head, my worries, my concerns, my stress; I just put my ipod in, let the worship in me take over, and by the time I'm ready to sleep, God is so close and has taken it off me completely. Different methods work for different people, I also run to unload.

For those of you who dream, don't underestimate the importance of that unloading, it will make your sleep that much more peaceful and God filled. Chances are, most of the time our nightmares are our own doing as we carry this stuff God waits for all day for us to give Him. Give it up. It's His to deal with, and don't forget that God made the world from rest. Rest is the default position, NOT the other way around.

God intended us to work from rest, so appreciating that rest in its fullness is crucial. I remember a wise friend of mine told me that it is not the enemy that creates these dreams but our own emotions, the enemy just jumps on the back of it because you're vulnerable when you sleep. I don't understand why we have nightmares, and why some people have them and others doing, but this is my two cents.

Feminine Fingernails and a Fender Telecaster...

How funny, I face a dilemma all the year round when I look at my bitten-down fingernails and think, "hmm, why on earth can I not just let them grow?" but I'm grateful for the fact that my fretboard on both my gorgeous Takamine and Fender are protected from the sharp cutting blades of my fingers when I play a simple D-chord. But with more time on my hands, less immediate stress, and a feminine feel, my nails are beautiful. Painting them regularly and filing them down, looking at them occasionally, optimizing what it means to be a woman (apparently)...and then, like a haunting memory from the past, it niggles at me from the early hours of the morning to the late hours of the night and into the earliest hours of the next morning. Creeping into my mind with words, and causing rapid palpitations of my heart, I can't sleep for fear of forgetting, and I sleep with my phone at my side to record anything that I might otherwise miss... You ask what it is? The rare beauty of a beast that they call songwriting.

Mark Knopfler once said Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing. Hysterical and totally rock and roll, what a legend. It made me giggle and brought to my attention the sheer complexity of what it means to song-write, but possibly one of the most fantastic lines I have ever found, was from Tracy Chapman, who said Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control. This is something that rings true I think of all song writers. In truth, I feel massively naughty writing this blog, I am no famous musician, not even a professional one. But I love music, my heart beats to its rhythm, and I long to create, just to create.

It has to be said, song writing has never really been my fort-ay, and neither do I think that I will ever consider that it is, but lately I have found my beating heart for creating these songs is keeping me up at night. Some of my most beloved musical inspiration arises from lyricists like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Kim Walker, and Missy Higgins. Varying capacities for different things, but all brilliant all the same. I have listened to all of these artists, often asking myself the question, "how on earth do they do it?"- This wonderful ability to transform emotions into words with melodic prose, seemed to me to be a gift that I would never possess. The majority of me argues that I still do not! But it does not and can not take away from the feeling of utter contentment in doing it.

It ebbs out of me, a pulsing iambic pentameter of emotion. I have to rein myself in from rhyming, and often have to re-erase several classically cheesy lines that have worked their way in there, but I can't seem to stop myself from coming back to it again and again. Even now, I sit here thinking, hmm, would rather go and pick up my telecaster and create! But I have already worked on it a little tonight and thought I'd share some thoughts on it...

I am feeling a little impatient at the moment, so desperate to finish my degree and get editing; unfortunately, I am aware of my need to accept criticism better in order to mould these songs into the sculptures that I can see in my head that maybe aren't coming out on the page. It is terrifying to think that something which has sprung so much out of your heart, has the potential to be torn to shreds with others' opinions. However, I can't wait! I am so looking forward to making these little scraps of creativity into something that might be worth something, like perhaps extracting diamonds from rock or separating the wheat from the chaff (and a lot of it is chaff!)

Some songs are out of extreme levels of emotion, but recently I have found mine arising completely from God. And I think that is where all my creativity lies. To be honest, I reckon God just has a massive drawer of creative resources, waiting for me to delve into it and pull it all out, mixing it into all the little capsules of imagination from the shrapnel of creativity that I have in me. My heart is for new worship songs, to spring out songs from my heart which resound the same wavelengths as other hearts to increase people's capacity to feel close to God. Song writing as a release is amazing, but I'm less talented in that area, but I find myself so happy to just listen to God talking at me and try to write this stuff down. To horribly quote Aerosmith, "I don't wanna miss a thing"...haha. Utter cheese I know... But it captures it well! God talking at you, who would want to miss that?

So there it is. A naive, child-like song-writer, new at the whole gig, but looking forward to diving in, with the assurance that my desire to project comes from the harmonic heart that God has delicately placed in my chest. The slightly erratic rhythm of it, is just me getting used to it, trying to rein in those cheesy lines and cliche beats. Time to cut those fingernails to bitten down, guitar playing shortness... sigh!

Meditation- a misnomer for the resting place of the Spirit

This could be deemed the second part to my previous piece on the imagination. Perhaps this may seem a controversial title for a blog coming from a Christian, especially when meditation is so generally used in the context of religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and New Agist schools of thought. However, I feel that the controversy surrounding this area is because of a misunderstanding of what it means to meditate. Yes, it is something completely different from Prayer, and separate too from just thinking. But my reasons for discussing this and exploring what it means in more detail, arise from two things; firstly, I recall an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine, Rachel, about meditation and what it means; and secondly, reaching a very busy time in my life with approaching the final exams and the dissertation of my degree, I find myself regularly needing to put my mind in a place where God can just invade and give me a sense of peace and well-being.

Princeton wordnet defines meditation in two ways, the first being (continuous and profound contemplation or musing on a subject or series of subjects of a deep or abstruse nature) "the habit of meditation is the basis for all real knowledge"; the second being contemplation of spiritual matters (usually on religious or philosophical subjects). I think I have found meditation to be a combination of the two in all truth. I however do not find myself to meditate on deep subjects, in fact quite the opposite. The root of the word in Latin, is that "med" in fact means to measure, examine or consider. But under such a definition, so too could philosophy fall. I neither think that it necessarily be profound thought. Contemplation of religious matters may be perhaps a category under the definition of meditation, but I do not think that it can be the definition in any way whatsoever. Perhaps to give a little more insight into what I find meditation actually is, I will attempt to illustrate where I have found myself doing it.

Art, songwriting and running are the three places where I find some peace from my own head. It is not an issue of using the imagination to escape, but a matter of putting yourself in a position, doing something that actively takes your mind away from where you are busiest and the most stressed, even if it means being busy doing something else. It is not a matter of burying the crap under more crap, it is a matter of putting it to the side by being in a place of total mental rest, so that when you look back at the mountain of work/stress/worry, you suddenly feel you can conquer it. But this is not from your own strength to do it, it is because in doing that activity, whatever it may be, you distract yourself in a way that gives God space to move in and join you in that.

I found it quite emphatically in two places doing very opposite things. The first was in Devon, up on a hill behind where my granny lives that looks over the sea and over farms across the Devonshire countryside. It was about a 10 minute trek up this rather steep hill, but it was completely worth the climb just to see the view. The funny thing about it, is that now, when I think back to that time, I think it was that the climb up the hill was actually clearing my head (in the same way that running does), so that when I reached the top of that hill, God was waiting for me, waiting for me to just go and sit with him, and just appreciate the sheer beauty of His creation. I always would leave that hill (having gone up after dinner) feeling ready for anything, it was a place where I just sat in God's company, as though I had left my problems at the bottom of the hill, and after sitting with God a while, when I walked back down, the problems had gone.

The other time I realised this peace was when I was painting. Singing along with Kim Walker, praying that God would somehow give my fingers the imagination of my heart, and in the midst of doing it, there was just nothing in my head but peace and the company of God.

Meditation is that place of finding peace from the business of life, where God waits. Communication is prayer, but His comforting and peace abounding company can be found in the things we love doing most, because where we are doing what we love with the gifts God has given us, He wants in on our enjoyment, He wants to spend time with us in the same way you want to hang around fun, happy people because they're infectious as is their laughter and enjoyment of life. I just really look forward to finding more places that God is waiting for me to discover where I'll love every moment of it, and find Him in that.

Imagination and the Wilderness of the Mind

So, the above may rub some of you readers the wrong way if you perhaps don't enjoy Jim Carrey, James Cameron or Matt Damon...But bear with me, these are from of my favourite films, and will help, I hope, to help you see a little bit into me and the madness of my little weird and wonderful world of imagination...And more importantly, shall hope to illustrate the importance of mind, memory and imagination, three of the most potent elements associated with all three films.

When I was eight years old, in a little international school in Kampala, Uganda, at the end of the school year, I was awarded a certificate for "The most vivid imagination". From that point on, I felt astonishingly proud of my imagination, I had been awarded seemingly for my ability to imagine another world, to imagine weird and wonderful creatures, to be the best in my class at escapism! What a fantastic time of life that is, where you are encouraged to escape life, which even at that time put little strain on me, deciding as to whether I make a den out of chairs or boxes. (I usually used big boxes). Things change a little as we get older though it would seem; imagining another place, another world, another life, can be stamped "childish" and plastered with comments like "someone needs to wake up to reality". There is such a pessimistic attitude that runs through society, concerning how tough reality is, how hard and trying life can be, well my job for now is to show how this is so definitely not the case whatsoever!

C.S. Lewis said that "It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." (Till We have Faces). Now here was a man who understood the cross over between reality and the imagination. The very placing of imagination in our minds is a God given gift, and a choice to let go of the burdens that life can sometimes put on our shoulders. There are two purposes I believe for the imagination which we are given, firstly to escape. I cannot deny that imagination can be a haven of peace for the busiest among us, or a world of adventure for the bored and restless among us. But secondly, and more importantly, it is so evident that we have been given this imagination to preeminently see the way God's world could and should be. But in looking at both, we will see how both are gifts in themselves.

A world of Adventure and a sea of Tranquility
Avatar was a controversial film, two groups of people generally on one side of the spectrum or the other, love. or hate. But 3 oscars to its name, 25 other awards and 56 nominations had to have accounted for something. Perhaps the more cynical among us will attribute it to the fantastic CGI effects, others to the fact that it was a film of James Cameron, but for me, I attribute it to the way in which the world of Pandora (in James Cameron's head) was spilled out onto the screen, creating a world in which every human being would want to exist if they could. The colours, vibrancy and the abilities of the avatars to connect with their world composes this total haven.

Bond, James Bond. Love them. All of them. Definitely a film for the restless in this world, every man wants the suave, the walk, the sharp fighting ability, and the charm to capture beautiful women of Bond; every woman wants the beauty, the sense of danger and being rescued of a Bond girl. Okay, maybe not every girl, but I have certainly found myself feeling alive and pumped with the adrenaline that courses through my veins when watching a Bond film.

And last but definitely not least, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A film about memory removal for fear to face reality. I love this film, possibly my favourite film of all time, as it follows the relationship between Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as it falls apart and Carrey goes to have her removed from his memory. Undoubtedly many of us have experienced a time or experience in our lives that we would like to erase from our memories, but this would definitely escape the reality that we cannot.

This wonderful sense of escapism is beautiful, anyone who dreams or daydreams can appreciate how when it reaches half past 2 on a monday afternoon in the middle of a maths lesson, there is nothing better than a bit if imagination to run away! But it can be a false sense of peace, a place to run to when things become scary or intense. This is when the imagination can be a dangerous place. The imagination is a place created by conscious thought being put towards an idea; the problem with this is that if we stay far from God in our thoughts, this imagination can be manipulated, and soon that escapist walls can be formed around our thoughts locking God out, and not letting ourselves breathe. Our thoughts, good and bad, and every aspect of our imaginative capacity needs to be given over to God.

Seeing God's world through our Imagination
I think often the reason that we feel a tendency towards wanting to escape at all, is to do with the hopelessness of reality. I must thank Tom Hardwick for his fantastic blog on the monsters in life (take a look at http://tom-hardwick.blogspot.com/)and for drawing it to my attention, as in reading his blog titled "If you're not scared, you're not paying attention", he addresses those monsters and how scary they can seem without God in the picture. Imagination is the bomb shelter from this life, but there is something so much more beautiful that it was intended for- seeing God's creation and the design for His world. We need to allow ourselves, and in fact push ourselves to examine how perfect this world could be, if everyone would come into relationship with Jesus. Imagination can invoke us to act on what we see in our heads, and how fantastic would it be if everyone in relationship with Jesus would be so excited to introduce their friends to Him, that transforming His world would become a reality more vivid, more vibrant and vastly superior to anything in the mind of James Cameron (no offence).
I desperately want to pray that God infiltrates my imagination with His spirit, overtaking every one of my thoughts and transforming them into seeing His kingdom on earth. I hope that the very imagination that I was awarded for would be a resting place for the Holy spirit, reminding me again and again of the vibrancy of His world, His earth, His kingdom.

Rebellious, Wished-for, and a Sea of Bitterness- You can call me Mary

Try though I may, to avoid the blood rushing to my face turning me a rather beetroot-esque colour, when I tell people my middle name and wait for them to hear in their head how the combination of my first and middle name sounds; it dawned on me throughout easter, the blessing that lies in a name. Catherine Mary. That's it, the most Catholic name a christian girl, from a christian family, could ask for, perhaps with the exception of Mary Catherine. I remember when I was about 7 years old, that I disliked my name, I wanted a "cooler" sounding name, like Rebecca, or Rachel or Laila. Catherine sounded too old, too traditional. So in an attempt to make it "cooler" (in my head at least), I varied in the years between 1997 and 2003 with Cathy, Cath, Cat, and I seem to recall being called "caffee" by one of my friends (though granted, she couldn't make the 'TH' sound, and so what was meant to be Cathy became Caffee, and eventually "coffee" as a joke"). I had decided Cat was the coolest way that I could get my name to sound, even though a number of my closest friends had still called me "cath", and it stuck like glue! Catherine is now a name that I adore and am so grateful to my parents for thinking of (despite being called Jake when they thought I was going to be a boy...their bad?)!

The name Mary however took me some getting used to, and ashamed though I am to admit it, it was not really until this easter that I began to find a real appreciation of what it means to share a name with one of the most Godly and awe-astounding women of the bible- Mary Magdalene. Granted, Jesus' mother too shared the same name, but for me personally, there was a resounding joy in the knowledge of Mary Magdalene's relationship with Jesus.

The first we hear of Mary is in Luke 8.2, where it talks about how Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Mary (called Magdelene) from whom seven demons had come out... Perhaps one of the most astonishing things that struck me when I read this was that at various points throughout the bible you read about people being healed, demons being cast out, and the blind receiving sight, but these are miracles in themselves, where people experience God through Jesus and then believe, but the following of Jesus is an internal understanding, not necessarily involving an external response. Yet Mary, through this awesome purification commits her life to following him. Scholars have described her as "a part of Jesus' ministry", and having been listed with the Disciples not only in Luke, but at the time of the Crucifixion, it is clear to see how loved by Jesus she was, and she loved him as her Saviour.

Though as striking as this is, what resounded with me this easter was her relevance and presence from the death of Jesus to His resurrection and her importance in everything that was to happen. John 19.25 says that near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. It must be noticed the significance of her relevance as being the last mentioned, and being the only one mentioned as an individual in her own right. Jesus however only speaks to John and His mother when He is on the cross, and this seemed so unusual to me considering her commitment to him, in following Him and her very presence at His crucifixion. However, that was before I had read how He had loved her so that she would be the first person to whom Jesus would appear after His death, and in His resurrection. She was the first to find the tomb empty, and the first to see Him. How sickened the Disciples must have felt to have missed that moment!

John 20.10 says Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the food. I love how easy it is to read the bible and just respond in such a way that you bypass verses like this, thinking, "ah yes, well seeing the odd angel wasn't unusual in Jesus' time"... Utterly ridiculous. This would have been a mind-boggling, ground breaking experience for Mary, in her position I would have imagined that the grief would have stricken so deep causing hallucinations, but I suppose that is the way of the unbelieving creature, so eager to rationalize everything away. Yet Mary did not. She was in fact engaged in conversation at two points by the tomb- asked the same question, giving the same response. First from the angels, second from Jesus. "Woman", he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?". So gently the way Jesus approached her, realizing she was blinded by her grief from losing her Saviour, that He would ask her, and simply wait for her to figure it out. He only has to say her name, and she realizes. How awesome she must have felt knowing that her relationship with Jesus meant just as much to Him as it had done to her. Everything that she had been with Him through, her loyalty, her whole being living for her God, meant that she would see Him, face to face, and be the first to do it.

This is nothing new to those who spend a lot of time in their bibles, but revisiting this made my heart beat with a new found love for Jesus, in the realization that I often find myself feeling so broken and unworthy of such an amazing relationship with the One who saved my life, and you only have to look at Mary to realize that He's waiting for you to see how He loves His relationship with you vastly more than you could even try to love your relationship with Him. His Grace Changes Everything.