Dreams and Memories

We have an experience and we say it impacts us. The impacts arise out of our memory. Everything we respond to is out of memory.

It is most easy to see this in regard to physical memory: the first time you experience something, for example a new taste, is the most impressive. The impact is at its height.
Later, as you have the taste more and more, it becomes "rote". The flavour seems to diminish! It is not actually the flavour which is diminishing but the mind's acceptance. The mind says "oh, yes, I KNOW what this tastes like"

Brain does a kind of computer search for all the known relevant experiences and reminds you of the taste of, say, banana. What you taste at this point is a question of focus: are you paying attention to the banana, the experience right now, or relying on memory to tell you what the experience is?

Memory is key to the development of everything we’ve done.
When we have a memory of how something works and we test that over time, we can then build, using this memory with other related, or even non-related patterns.

This is how we invent, discover and experiment.

Dreams help us re-live memory with the emotion as it is. Actually we must say dreams help us relive the memory as it truly was: teachings from Namgyal Rinpoche tell us our night dreams come in four stages: the first is to clear any toxins, emotional, or physical from the day life. This first level starts with the day which has just past.

In other words, the dreams start with clearing the memories: physical, emotional, psychological.
What is meant by clearing on the emotional is to review, or to re-visit the event with the full emotion present.

Say for example you are with your child. The child has a temper tantrum and you, as a loving and well grounded parent do not respond with your own temper.
You take care of emotions for both of you. That is what you do on the surface.

In the night dream you may find yourself really angry at your child!

If the emotion was not experienced in the daylife and is needed to help create balance, those emotions will arise at night.

Of course this does not mean you ought to yell at your child in daylife. It means you must experience the anger, or release it, and dreams are a safe way to do this.

Namgyal further taught that all of our usual biochemical reactions and responses, all our hormonal rushes are present in night dreams but without the karma!

see Dreams and Karma