MOVIE RECOMMENDATION

I took a philosophy class this summer, and the instructor showed us a movie called "The Waking Life". This movie rocked my world, and would recommend it to anyone and everyone!!! The film's focus is on the world of dreams, consciousness, and existentialism. The nameless main character is a young man who shuffles through a continuous series of dreams, which eventually leads him to an existential crisis. There is SO much hidden symbolism throughout the movie, as the main character drifts through scenes, listening to theories from different philosophers, intellectuals, and "crackpots". Watching the movie several times is a great idea to absorb all that the movie offers. It will never get old. . . . So please, do yourself a favor and check it out. LINK HERE -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2DeTet98o

A 6th Sense?

   
     Sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. Humans share all of these senses, but is there an additional sense we have that is, perhaps, most powerful? People have talked to lost loved-ones in their dreams, they have predicted the future in their dreams, and some have woken up from dreams with revelations about life. All of these in themselves could be considered 6th senses, in my opinion. In order for these things to happen, the mind has to connect to another level that is also connected to reality. Pretty confusing. . . I'm not sure of a name to even call this sense. This sense, though, is having premonitions, or a "feeling" about events that are going to happen. Here are a few catastrophes that people have had dream premonitions about:
               - a 1966 British coal waste landslide
               - the Twin Towers tragedy
               - the sinking of the Titanic
In the 1966 landslide, in Aberfan, Great Britain, a school was crushed in the destructive path of the coal mine waste and boulders. 144 people were killed, 116 of them being children. But one 10-year-old girl, Eryl Mai Jones, saw the tragedy coming. A couple days before the tragedy, she told her mother that she wasn't scared of death, and also that she "would be with Peter and June". Then on the morning of the landslide, she asked her mom if she wanted to hear about her dream. She told her mother that she "went to school and there was no school there. Something black had come down all over it." That day, Eryl was killed alongside her friends Peter and June. They were buried side-by-side in a mass grave. WOW. I would never want to be in her mother's shoes. This account of a premonition was enough to convince me. There is a power the mind has, and I am eager to find out how to reach it in my own head.

Unanswered Questions

So where do we begin in our exploration of the dream realm? Everyone dreams, but how much are we really clear on. . . ? This article from the NY Times takes a look at some possible answers to our unanswered questions: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/12/opinion/l-dream-study-supports-freud-unanswered-questions-038180.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The writer, Paul Mosher, talks about the debate about whether or not we have the ability to solve problems while we dream. They don't have a clear answer to the question, but I think part of the beauty of dreams is that we may never know what they mean. I like being connected to something that has endless possibilities. Defending the claim that we can problem solve in our slumber are scientists Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman. They have described the "image-rich", "metaphoric" thought processes that took place during their most "original scientific discoveries". This same imagery occurs when we dream. Looking within our own mind, we can decide for ourselves if there is deeper meaning to the images we see. . .