Eureka...

From all the three readings we had to do the one I enjoyed reading most was Hughes ( chap 4). I love anything to do with dreams and the mind. I think it's fascinating from the sleep walking to the creative dreams to the lucid dream and being aware that you are dreaming. I liked how Hughes goes on to explain the stages of REM and how the last stage or last 45 minutes of us dreaming is what we usually recall from the dream after we wake up. But how about the 10 minute cat naps? How does one explain having dreams while napping for 10 minutes or less if one can only remember the last 45 minutes of it. (I know this may not make sense...but I had to write it...maybe I didn't make sense of this part correctly...LOL)

Most dreams are based on realistic situations in which one or other individuals are involved; generally clear and believable except lucid dreaming. I know individuals who can control dreams and are very aware of what is going on but I can not control any aspect of it (as sad as it may sound). I have tried to fall asleep looking at an object so that if i were to have bad dreams I can escape or do something about it. But it doesn't always work and I wake up screaming or kicking (LOL). Hughes says, "Lucid dreams subjectively experience the reality of the dream environment, but remain in possession of their normal intellectual faculties". I remember I had a dream when I was a child about an ugly dwarf grabbing me and pulling me down underneath the bed and I will pull back and kick and scream but no sound will come out but somehow I could hear myself and so I would pull and pull to get closer to the door but the more I pulled away the closer he took me down...and so I woke up screaming and in a sweat right when I was taken down under the bed. I know this may sound freaky and crazy but it felt as real as having to know you have to breath in order for your heart to function (if you get my drift).

I also enjoyed reading the part on pg. 57 (Hughes) on how people who believe dreams can affect their ways by keeping a dream diary and improving on how dreams can be suggested. I thought this was very cool. OBE experience is thought to be very real and it fascinates and intrigues me to know that people have come out of their bodies into the spiritual world and seen themselves and relatives and eventually report it later that this is true.

On another note I did also enjoyed some parts of Pearce's reading. Sometimes I felt like I needed a pencil and paper to draw or put down some equations that my mind alone could not process without making some sense into it; almost like the algebraic problem that takes so much work and at the end you think the answer is going to be this "Oh my god!" "Finally" but then you actually get zero as the answer. This is how I felt in some moments. I did find somethings I could relate to for example: "In every recorded case of Eureka! illumination, the final breakthrough of the postulate occurs at a moment when the logical processes have been momentarily suspended, a moment of relaxation from serious work" (Pearce 70). I like to watch House ( an ER like show but more suspenseful because Hugh Grant is such a darn good actor...love him) and in this show he and his crew of diagnostic doctors have to cure or save patients lives who come to him with weird illnesses and crazy open brain surgery and the works. And every time I watch this show am at the edge of the seat because I also (along with him) want to find my Eureka and cure the patients. But many times he finds his "true enlightenment" by stepping away from the problem and putting it out there...somehow he always knows...he gets to the bottom of it and finally "Wow" he does it...almost like a shaman or a spiritual healer.