Your Supernatural Radio
In this series on seers and dreams, I’m encouraging you to consider your brain like a supernatural radio, in that it is tuned into different frequencies of reality and it attempts to make sense of the input it receives. For some people, the narrative our minds constructs isn’t very accurate.
Some people have brains that easily tune into the supernatural. For seers, this tuning in causes them to see things in the spirit realm. Some seers learn to tune in or tune out of the spiritual realm, and as parents, we can assist our children in lowering their spiritual antenna.
For others, so much noise goes on during the day, or their seeing ability isn’t as strong, they’re unable to significantly tune into the spiritual realm during the day.
To perceive supernatural information, they must wait until their brain is tuned down to outside stimuli: when they are asleep. And then the supernatural input comes, and our minds take that input, uses available imagery in our brains and constructs a narrative to relay the message.
Basically, our brains receive information all the time, and they filter the information, reorganize it, trying to make sense of it. Sometime the way they make sense of it at first isn’t very accurate. Other times, they are.
Sleep Paralysis
Last time, I mentioned my participation in the Peeranormal podcast episode on EVP and how research into EVP related to dream interpretation. I also participated in the episode on Sleep Paralysis. The articles we read and the podcast recording are available here.
Sleep paralysis is a phenomena where many physical conditions that naturally occur in sleep cascade in such a way that the brain constructs a terrifying narrative. But in most cases, the narrative is a false one.
Our minds often lie to us.
While generally a natural phenomena, I believe in many cases, the conditions that lead to sleep paralysis leave a person vulnerable to a demonic attack. In these situations, the condition of sleep paralysis is much more intense and terrifying. As mentioned in this post, the best remedy against a spiritual attack in the night (or anytime) involves calling on the person of Jesus Christ to help.
REM and Non-REM Sleep
When you sleep, basically, ideas and thoughts will continue flashing through your brain, and your brain will try to construct a narrative to make sense of it. We basically have two kinds of sleep: Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep. Each stage of sleep is a different level of consciousness.
We tend to remember dreams as we shift levels of consciousness: into or out of non-REM sleep or into or out of REM sleep.
REM sleep is vital to your brain’s health. In this state, your eyes will move all over, and each position activates different parts of your brain. This serves as an important brain function of clearing out junk and reorganizing files.
Some old timers will understand this next analogy. About a hundred years ago, there was a computer operating system called Windows 95. This operating system would save data all over its hard drive, causing data to “fragment.” Eventually, the computer would slow down as it struggled to find data across the hard drive and piece it together to be used.
Periodically, users were supposed to “defrag” the computer. This utility scanned the hard drive, and put together fragmented files so the computer could find them quicker and operate more efficiently. I used to watch the utility run, fascinated.
Of course, REM sleep doesn’t do this in your brain. But it does other useful stuff to make your brains function properly, so I like to use it as analogy. If you don’t get REM sleep, your brain will do all sorts of destructive things to you.
We tend to remember dreams when we shift into phases of consciousness because we are often closest to being awake, but our bodies and minds are in a state where our consciousness isn’t much interacting with our surroundings. Our brains are doing their stuff.
Help Remember Dreams
Many people often don’t remember their dreams, but they want too. They transition between stages of consciousness so quickly, they don’t really have a chance to remember what it is they are dreaming.
It’s possible you are overly tired and worn out, overworked and overly stressed. You aren’t getting enough sleep consistently, so your body plunges itself deep into sleep, and you’ll never remember your dreams. It’s trying to defrag your computer, but you don’t sleep long enough to let the defrag software to run, and so it cannot run very effectively.
Here are some solutions to this.
- Go to Bed Earlier. Sleeping in later isn’t a great way to improve your sleep, but going to bed earlier is – it doubles the effectiveness per hour of your rest. For instance, if you go to bed an hour earlier on a regular basis, your body may reap the benefits of sleeping two additional hours.
- Don’t drink alcohol, caffeinated drinks, or eat sugary food within 2 hours of going to bed. This gives your body time to wind down naturally, devoid of stimulants, drugs, and poisonous sugar.
- Avoid watching TV or playing computer games or looking at lit screens within a half hour of sleep. The flashing lights shape your brains in a such a way that is not very conducive to having good REM sleep. I know lots of people drift off to sleep while watching TV… this isn’t very healthy. God didn’t design our bodies to fall asleep while looking at flashing screens that try to hold our attention.
- Leave your mobile devices in a different room. If steps 1, 2, and 3 don’t work, then try this drastic step. Don’t consistently sleep with your mobile device or smart phone next to you. Believe it or not, that text message really can wait, and any phone call occurring during REM sleep can wait until you wake up.
In all seriousness, studies consistently show that mobile devices in bedrooms negatively effect the quality of sleep – even if they are turned off! And this is especially the case with children and adolescents (up to age 24). See this study on mobile phone use disrupting sleep patterns of young adults.
If you are fearful you’ll miss an actual emergency call, trust the Lord to send an angel to wake you up in an emergency.
Try these techniques consistently and after a few weeks, you’ll wind your mind down gently so you sleep well – and I bet you’ll start remembering some of your dreams! You’ll also reap numerous other health benefits.
Still Can’t Remember Your Dreams? Try this.
If that still doesn’t work, then intentionally disrupt your sleep patterns in natural ways. For instance, drink a large glass of water before going to bed.
In the night, your body will wake you to use the toilet, thus disrupting your sleep. In this case, it’s likely you’ll remember some of your dreams as your mind swiftly shifts from one level of consciousness to another. Quickly jot down some of what you remember before going back to sleep.
Some will think these are artificial ways to force you to remember your dreams. It’s not. Drinking water is a good, healthy thing to do, and you need several hours of natural sleep to maintain good physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
In fact, many mental health situations remedy themselves once people get enough sleep consistently. For instance, children who are typically dis-regulated and out of control often simply don’t get enough sleep. When they do get enough sleep consistently, pay attention to their dreams as well.
Good Sleep is important to Accurate Dreams!
Good sleep isn’t just important to your overall physical, mental, and spiritual health, it’s important to dreaming as well. You can’t expect your mind to construct accurate narratives in your dreams if your mind is messed up because you aren’t sleeping well. Defrag your brain and the quality of your dreams and interpretation will improve.
I agree with all that is said about preparation for sleep. I work with people as a therapist and mention all of the above about TV, mobile phones etc and mention these things routinely to my clients; who often say they have poor sleep patterns. I also know that I am very susceptible to toxic intrusions when I sleep and so have to be very disciplined in my routines. I drink loads of plain water, have no TV or mobile in my bedroom and in fact have NO TV in my home at all. Radio yes at times. I say the Jesus prayer at times: “Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy—” None of this of course works immediately but it does eventually have a salutary impact that is permanent and so healthful. I am 70 now and have had the most unbelievable challenges for some 15 years long and yet most people experience my presence as grounded and calm! But this is due to discipline and hard work it doesn’t just happen. I also attend retreats and I do karate as an exercise and I am an artist and paint as a meditation to support my inner work and process. We all have to find our own unique process that will enable us to be more of ourselves –unique!