Optimus2g

I've found that it's in my nature to worry--excessively--to the point that I've woken up in cold sweats a few times. This has happened to me due to many circumstances. The one I'll mention here has been a fear of death. I always worry about my mother's declining health due to diabetes and try to push myself so I can support her comfortably if anything were to ever happen to her--I HATE nursing homes. Mind you, she is doing fine now, but my constant worry is that she will fall ill, much the same way her father did. Since he died when he was young, I have always feared that this would happen to her. I try to let go of the paranoia but it always seems to come back to me in some way, shape or form in my dreams. I guess this is a form of compensation that explains why I push myself as hard as I do, because if I don't my guilt at not doing so would haunt me even more than these kinds of dreams have. I'll be in my dream and I'll hear a voice that I'm not doing enough, and that I better push myself harder or ELSE...

In the state of cerebral isolation named Dreaming, the confrontation between our perceived sensations and external causes is impossible, according to Lewes. Cerebral activity is actually entirely isolated from external excitations, as opposed to Hallucinations when the aforementioned confrontation is disregarded, rather than being rendered impossibility. He makes the point that “the avenues of Sense are closed in Sleep, but the emotional centers may be reached from within. (111)” He explains this by making mention of the story of a lady who dreamt that her servant was coming to murder her and upon waking she saw the servant in front of her with a knife in hand. According to him this could be explained because the woman heard sounds like a door opening or the creaking of footsteps on the stairs, which in her mind, because this concept was familiar to her, justified why this particular strain of thought encompassed this dream.

He goes on to explain that we do not pause on suggestions that may be considered absurd when we are awake while we are dreaming. Since we don’t reflect on them, but instead allow them to “succeed one another (112),” we are lulled into the sense of the absurd or surreal becoming the norm, which is complete polar opposite of waking life. Interestingly he says that he thinks that it is a mistake that nothing surprises us in dreams. He explains this by stating that he is conscious of his own experiences in dreams, and feels a slight surprise when scenes change, but he is not arrested—meaning that he does not stop to consider how this is significant in the grand scheme of things, but continues in this strand of thought that has come suddenly and interestingly arisen. Much like a wave, he says, the sensations of thought constantly succeed one another (112); as when we engage in reverie during waking life. He ultimately correlates how the senses serve to interrupt our streams of thought in waking life because we are forced to because of the physical nature of the world we are in when we are awake. This is uninhibited, however, when we are asleep. The wanderings of our minds are controlled in this manner, he argues. He goes on to say that the presence of external objects is justified because our senses are amplified right before we go to sleep. He illustrates his point by alluding to the sensations we experience upon lying awake in bed with our eyes closed, a time in which the amplification of these senses is acutely exhibited.

Continuing with my theme of worry, I've experienced this in relation to more than a few things that have impacted my life. I haven't been able to shake loose from some of these problems I've had mainly due to the leftover angst that I've experienced that hasn't left me. This is mostly due to guilt. The example I'll point out in this case is due to my beating myself up over my feelings of failure related to my relationship with my ex-fiance. I saw her a few days ago and didn't want to look at her, and she decided to call me up to be "friends"...(friends after 6 years?)This didn't sit well with me and has lingered into to my dreams as well. I've not been able to sleep at times due to the exhaustion that I experience due to pushing myself hard so I can try and not engage in any day dreaming that occurred due in part to my anger at our bitter end. I try to find refuge in sleep, but it doesn't work unfortunately...My feelings of guilt haunt me there as much as they do in my waking life...I've gotten better at it mind you over time, but the residual effect still remains...I'll have flashbacks to good things and bad things that happened between us and then wake up all of a sudden thinking she was right there with me only to realize it's just a dream...other times I'll know I'm dreaming and actually picture conversations between us, and won't want to wake up, but secondary revision kicks in and eventually leads to another unsatisfying end to my dream with her. Either way, it seems, I CAN'T win...

**The followwing excerpts are from the website I have linked below. Please see this informative link for the source material, as it orignally appeared from this informative blog. I highly recommend it**

"Maria Ruvoldt’s book The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration: Metaphors of Sex, Sleep and Dreams is an absorbing study of ‘the Renaissance perception, production and reception of sleep and dreams and their relation to divine inspiration.’ In Chapter 6 of the book, Ruvoldt looks in detail at a fascinating drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti, 'Il Sogno' (The Dream)":

"The drawing, done in graphite on paper, was made around 1533. It is currently in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art. Ruvoldt speculates that it was among a number of pieces that Michelangelo presented as gifts to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, a young man with whom the artist had recently become infatuated. The drawing has been interpreted (by Panovsky, among others) as an allegory for virtue triumphing over vice in an ‘awakening of the soul.’"

I took an immediate liking to this image because of how it indicates the position of the mind and dreaming in this particualr time and place. I was very interested in Ruvoldt had to say about the positioning of the angel's trumpet on the central depicted male figure:
"Apparently, Renaissance medical tradition held that the forehead corresponded to the location of the mind’s imaginative faculty, to that part of the brain which receives and preocesses visual impressions: in which case, what we see here is a depiction of the artist directly inspired by images received ‘from above.’" I found it interestign to trace the connection between the medical thoughts of the time pertaining to dreams and how they were depicted artistically.

***Please see this website for more information on my source material for this specific image; I found it to be fascinating and quite helpful.***

The following image shown here (highlighted on the top left) depicts an image of Medieval sculpture/architecture from Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Gilles in Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, France. This image of the left portal (North) - Tympanum depicts the following 3 images from left to right: The Gifts of the Magi, Virgin and Child, Dream of Joseph

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This image on the right of the left portal (highlighted above & displayed on the left) depicts the dream Joseph had in which he was commanded by an Angel of the Lord to flee into Egypt with his wife Mary and the infant Jesus, to escape from Herod; there they stayed until Herod eventually died a few short years later, after which time they all returned to Palestine. I found this image on the right to be very rough, yet striking, which made it stand out when juxtaposed with the other two biblical images in the left and the center of the tympanum.